Open by design, blind by fragmentation: foreign interference in Five Eyes higher education

Foreign states can integrate finance, research collaboration, institutional partnership, student organization and coercion into a strategy directed at universities. The Five Eyes states observe these channels separately, through administrative categories that divide funding disclosure from research security, student welfare from counterintelligence, and coercion from institutional behaviour. Drawing on a structured comparison of the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, this article argues that the vulnerability is best understood not as a collection failure but as an intelligence failure of synthesis. It proposes a Five Eyes education-security architecture built on linked disclosure, shared analysis and institutional exit capacity.