Tag Archive for: Australia

Australia can lead in clean-energy waste management

As the world transitions to clean energy technology, managing the hazardous waste that it produces becomes an urgent issue. Australia is well positioned to take the lead in this field and create a vertically integrated supply chain for critical-minerals and hazardous-waste management. It can do so by building on its excellent import-export infrastructure and expertise in natural resource extraction and handling.

Ensuring the safe disposal of hazardous waste is essential in a resilient and reliable green industry. The value chains for every currently viable green technology produce materials that are hazardous to the natural environment, and recycling cannot eliminate them entirely.

Thanks to a dry climate, low seismic activity, and sparsely populated areas, Australia is well positioned to build an industrial capacity in clean energy waste management and manage waste produced domestically as well as that of strategic partners. For example, Tellus’s operational Sandy Ridge repository in Western Australia handles, and their future Chandler repository in Northern Territory will handle, waste produced around the country and can even take certain waste from nuclear submarine operations. By working with the traditional owners of the land, such facilities can also give an economic boost to the area, thereby building the community support needed to continue developing domestic green industries.

The investments required to facilitate a clean energy industry have already been made. The Australian government committed $840 million to the Arafura Resources project, which will create the nation’s first combined mine and refinery for minerals. At the sub-national level, the Middle Arm Sustainable Development Precinct in the Northern Territory added depth to the industrial base and infrastructure. The combination of such efforts has created an ecosystem for not only exporting clean materials but operating a world-leading hazardous waste management industry.

It is imperative that consumers understand that the premium paid on green minerals ensures that the industry is sustainable. The safeguards not only include labour standards but prevent disastrous ecological damage during production associated with the cheaper products.

Australian critical- minerals producers already face difficulty in competing on price. Through vertical control of supply chains, Chinese firms can manipulate the price of lithium and other critical minerals, grossly distorting market forces and undermining the viability of non-Chinese firms. While there was a market correction in the price of nickel in 2022, the development of the Indonesian nickel mining and processing industry, supported by Chinese investment, has led to ever increasing product surpluses. This prompted Australian private nickel producer Wyloo Metals to announce a temporary shutdown of its mines, while mining company BHP’s Nickel West operations at Kambalda are under review.

Legislation such as the US Inflation Reduction Act may provide some relief. The law includes guardrails that favour US strategic partners in development of critical minerals supply chains. Financial incentives and mandates to use clean materials support allied manufacturers and prevent China from dominating industries that are vital to US national security. As a strategic partner, Australia is well positioned to capitalise on this.

In an attempt to improve transparency about the true costs of critical mineral production, Australia and the United States called on the London Metals Exchange to differentiate between ‘clean’ nickel produced by countries with high environmental, social and governance standards and ‘dirty’ nickel produced at high cost to the environment. The exchange rejected the proposal, however, citing challenges in liquidity of trading.

An alternative way to increase consumer awareness would be to introduce ethical production labels similar to battery passports and build up support through such initiatives as Buy Australian. Coordination among strategic partners is essential to sending strong demand signals and promoting price stability during market distortions. Without this, the risk of closing more mines and processing plants will only increase.

Australia can and should play a leadership role in clean energy waste management and in lifting environmental standards throughout the Indo-Pacific. As the global race for critical minerals intensifies, it’s easy to overlook environmental costs when supply chains don’t have real solutions to the problem of toxic or radioactive waste. But in the long term, such projects will lose public support and jeopardise an industry that is vital to the green transition and national security. Australia must prioritise holistic approaches to green technology or risk ceding its position as a global leader in the mining industry and becoming entirely reliant on China for materials.

Making the most of AUKUS: capitalising on Australian competitive advantage

Opinions vary on the AUKUS partnership’s likely long-term effects on Australia’s military capacity. To some, it is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to foster international collaboration, spur private investment and build a more robust domestic defence industry. To others, it is an invitation to open more Australian tenders to prime contractors from the US and Britain, thereby drowning Australia’s small businesses under a tsunami of foreign competition.

As ASPI notes in a new study, the course the alliance takes depends on Australia’s ability to get details right. Its fate is entirely in its own hands. As in any competitive endeavour, winning will require making the most of existing advantages.

Few technology areas illustrate the importance of Australia’s competitive advantages as hypersonics do. Australia has two important assets which, properly managed, could make the country not only a critical enabler of joint hypersonics research and development but a global leader in its own right. Those advantages are geography and brainpower.

Start with brainpower. In 2020, the United States’ hypersonics research and development efforts were just moving from scattered early-stage research into major prototyping programs of record. That same year, its Department of Defense awarded Texas A&M University a five-year contract to establish and manage the University Consortium for Applied Hypersonics.

Australia got in on the effort early. Defence Science and Technology Group investigations of the capability go back at least to 2006, through joint experimentation with the US Air Force Research Laboratory. In late 2020, the Southern Cross Integrated Flight Research Experiment emerged from that partnership. Six Australian universities are affiliated with the consortium led by Texas A&M. In January 2022, the Morrison government inaugurated the Australian Hypersonics Research Precinct. Spinoffs abound.

Growing out of that nascent innovation ecosystem was the Australian startup Hypersonix, one of the few small companies to challenge the global defence prime contractors and become a well-known name in the field. Hypersonix was recently awarded a contract through the US Defense Innovation Unit to provide a hypersonic drone for testing in early 2025.

But the rate of progress may be peaking. Significant headwinds limit Australia’s ability to take full advantage of early investments. One of these is its system for controlling export of sensitive military technologies.

Contrary to common belief, the main problem is not that Australian hypersonics development efforts are hamstrung by the United States’ draconian International Traffic in Arms Regulations. On the contrary, Australian export controls are inadequate—especially for technologies with strong national security implications like hypersonics. Failing to protect military secrets to the level expected by international partners restricts the ability of Australian businesses and academic departments to participate fully in international innovation efforts. Addressing this gap while avoiding the dysfunction of the US system will be critical to making the most of AUKUS Pillar II.

A second factor restricting Australia’s ability to capitalise on brainpower is its industrial security program. As important as protecting military secrets is maintaining a system for sharing them among those who need to know. This requires secure facilities, robust information technology systems and thorough vetting of researchers and engineers, including university students. The Defence Industrial Security Program, charged with helping private-sector organisations achieve these objectives, is slow, expensive and poorly integrated with its counterpart in the US.

Fixing these problems is largely a matter of legislation, regulation and organisation. Investment will be necessary, but not much compared with other spending. The secret of success is turning the focus away from glitzy hardware and towards the administrative details that enable its development and eventual shift into production.

Along with Australian brainpower goes fortunate geography. Test range availability is holding back US development programs, as highlighted in a recent annual report from its operational test and evaluation enterprise. Over-water ranges inhibit the ability of US researchers to study terminal phases of flight and recover test vehicles. They open opportunities for observation by strategic competitors. Australia possesses vast amounts of the flat, empty terrain that’s low in electromagnetic interference. That land is ideal for testing hypersonic systems.

What does it take to capitalise on this competitive advantage? First, Australia must have classified information management systems that operate seamlessly with those of allied partners. Operational testing requires vast amounts of data. This data is recorded on test vehicles, transmitted through myriad communication channels and shared among developmental engineers.

Australians can’t fully participate in that data-powered ecosystem because of US and Australian rules for classified data handling that restrict access to enabling technologies such as encryption. Compounding the problem are poor integration between partner data-management systems and, again, export control regulations that discourage joint hardware development and draw out timelines for technical assistance agreements.

A second obstacle to making the most of geography is technical standards. Global supply chains are enabled by shared standards that regulate everything from manufacturing to energy. Standards are what allow semiconductors from Taiwan to fit automobiles from Mexico, and Australian components to fit French aircraft auxiliary power units. Standards across the defence industry allow deconfliction of electromagnetic spectrum, safe handling of explosives and so on.

Many of the standards employed by Australia’s defence industry do not match those of international partners. This makes collaboration difficult. Any partner wishing to make use of Australian test facilities would add time and money to its program schedule in addressing such complications.

Hypersonic vehicles are one of many technology areas in which Australia has much to offer. Too often, the critical bottleneck is not scarce resources but a lack of basic planning and coordination. Such prosaic obstacles should not prevent Australia from making the most of its competitive advantages. If we are to fully capitalise on the AUKUS opportunity, we must start by fixing the little stuff.

Defence industry and the illusion of control

A well-worn yarn in defence industry circles is the tale of the apocalyptic Last Supper of 1993. Then-US defense secretary Les Aspin called chief executives from the major prime contractors to a secret dinner at the Pentagon. He told them that times were about to change. The Cold War was over. Falling defence budgets meant the acquisition enterprise could no longer support such a wide range of capability providers. They must consolidate or die. 

In the years that followed, the US defense industry did just that. Spending fell by more than 18 percent in real terms between 1993 and 1998. The number of aerospace and defense prime contractors fell from 51 then to just five today. The DoD is suffering from the consequences of that decision. 

Hogwash. 

As Australia debates its new defence industry strategy and appropriate mechanisms to support it under the AUKUS framework, we must be careful to distinguish fact from fiction. One of the most pernicious mistakes in devising industrial policy is overestimating our ability to dictate outcomes. People are bad at translating strategy into practice.

Yes, the US defence budget fell in the years immediately following that epochal dinner. But as soon as 1999 it was on its way back up. The attacks of 2001 put the recovery into high gear. By 2010, the budget would be more than 50 percent larger than it was in 1993. The trend towards industry consolidation continued throughout. 

Increasing levels of concentration have been observed across a range of industries. One study estimates that more than 75 percent of US industries have grown more concentrated over the past several decades. We are all familiar with the phenomenon as it relates to the global tech giants. So, clearly there are forces at play going far beyond the defence sector.

Those forces are not the focus here. Rather, the view offered of the US defence industry—and how it is perceived by senior leaders across the public and private sectors—is informative when examining the problems Australia faces in the same domain.

Senior public servants would like to think they command the resources of a nation, and industry titans that they serve the forces of virtue and democracy through the pursuit of material wealth. Both worldviews are not without value. 

But they become a problem when they create an illusion of control, when they make everyone forget that operative forces arise not from grand visions and sweeping decrees but from the regulatory frameworks and organisational incentives directing day-to-day behaviors of millions of front-line employees. 

In a recent report, ASPI examines the problem from the perspective of those front-line employees. We reached out to hundreds of them, distributing surveys, conducting interviews, holding workshops and attending conferences and seminars. We talked with small- and medium-sized enterprises all the way up to prime contractors. We asked about what is holding them back, and what must be fixed if the AUKUS security partnership is to achieve its goals. 

The stories we heard are illuminating. Time and again, businesspeople hear the rhetoric and turn to their public-sector partners only to discover that, whatever the official guidance, nothing has percolated down so far as to affect daily decisions. 

An Australian SME was awarded a contract to supply a hypersonic test drone. The launch will require collaboration with the US Wallops Island Flight Facility and New Zealand’s Rocket Lab, among others. The company faces obstacle after obstacle as it tries to integrate its technology with systems operating on different technical standards. Rocket Lab, falling under a separate regulatory framework that New Zealand aligned long ago with that of the US, faces fewer such hurdles. 

Another Australian business, a small one, sought export-control approval to sell its product abroad. Directed to the self-service portal of the Defence Export Controls Branch office (DECO), the company was advised through the tool that no license was required. More than two years later, it received two separate violation letters from the Australian Border Force related to the sale. 

The company took the letters to DECO, which admitted that the online guidance was open to misinterpretation. But it placed responsibility with the ABF. The ABF refused to retract the letters unless DECO told it to do so. Despite agreement from officials on both sides that the company was treated unfairly, everyone pointed the finger elsewhere and refused to retract the violation letters on their own authority. If it gets one more such letter, the company will be prohibited from exporting. 

Prime contractors face challenges of a different sort. One hiring manager we spoke to, anticipating the turbulent environment ahead, was working on bringing in expertise in export-control regulation. 

Much of the debate over AUKUS-centered amendments to Australia’s Defence Trade Control Act 2012 focuses on funding: significant investment will be needed to establish and maintain compliance with the new rules. The Australian defence industry is composed largely of SMEs lacking the resources for such efforts. Who will fund the shift? 

But even businesses possessing resources to support such efforts—businesses out there trying to hire—tell us that the discussion about funding is immaterial. Adequate expertise does not exist in the Australian economy. 

ASPI asked the Office of Defence Industry Support for the referral list it had provide to SMEs seeking help in navigating export control regulations. The list contained four boutique consultancies and a link to general guidance published by the Australian Industry Group. The Australian Bureau of Statistics estimates the size of the defence industry at $10.6 billion.

The success of AUKUS does not depend on the visionary leadership of defence ministers and cabinet secretaries. We’ve all heard about the vision. What matters now is their ability to marshal resources and guide bureaucracies toward solutions to everyday problems like these. It depends on stuff that isn’t any fun and doesn’t win votes, stuff down in the weeds of regulatory codes and organisational incentives. 

The single biggest obstacle to the AUKUS effort will be the illusion that grand vision is sufficient to steer the ship.

Japan, AUKUS and cyberwarfare

Cooperating to strengthen Japan’s cyber defences and develop new offensive cyberweapons must be the first priority of any AUKUS collaboration involving Japan. Not only is this now key to Japan’s security, but it is a vital precursor before Australia, Britain and the US can trust that deeper involvement by Japan in the military pact can take place.

AUKUS exists to develop strategic weapons and technologies required to deter China and other states from threatening the peace of Australia’s region. The prospect of Japan joining the pact could improve the speed and scope of such technology development, bolstering the credibility of present efforts to deter China as the world scrambles to reduce the prospect of war.

This month, AUKUS defence ministers announced that Japan’s incorporation into AUKUS is being ‘considered’, but they have remained tight-lipped as to what specific technology development Japan would be included in. We do know, however, that Japan’s involvement would focus on the development of so-called advanced capability projects under Pillar 2 of the pact. This encompasses the development of underwater drones, quantum technology, artificial intelligence, hypersonic weapons, electronic warfare systems and advanced cyber capabilities. Those technologies are key to Australia’s and Japan’s ability to defend themselves in a future war and have been prioritised in the Australian government’s recent National Defence Strategy. It is in the area of offensive and defensive cyber capabilities that collaboration with Japan is most urgent.

In recent years, Japan has been heavily targeted by China and state-backed cybercriminals, including in successful attacks on Japan’s own cybersecurity centre, the country’s space agency, major firms like some in the Mitsubishi group, and even the prime minister’s office. Japan has responded to these growing cyber threats by expanding the parts of its armed forces that are responsible for cyberwarfare. In its recent national defence strategy, Japan has also publicly expressed for the first time a willingness to use offensive cyber capabilities to pre-emptively disrupt adversaries targeting its networks.

Japan’s efforts to strengthen its cybersecurity defences are limited by the size and available expertise of its workforce. Collaboration under the auspices of AUKUS is an obvious way for Japan to address this by operating jointly with the US, Britain and Australia to train its cyber workforce and obtain greater foreign assistance in protecting its networks.

The hard reality is that Japan must first address its cybersecurity deficiencies before deeper integration into the AUKUS pact is possible. For AUKUS members and Japan to realise the synergies of integrating members’ military and research sectors, they must be confident that tech secrets can be safely shared and developed between them. Conversely, China’s and Russia’s foreign intelligence services will know that a sufficiently high-profile breach of the AUKUS crown jewels of one member could scuttle the whole partnership.

Japan may have struggled to expand its cybersecurity workforce, but Japanese industry is a global leader in technological innovation, and it has a record of producing insightful intelligence on emerging technology. Japan’s technology prowess could transform AUKUS’s ability to produce game-changing cyber weapons—a research-intensive exercise that requires deep knowledge of how specific devices and components are designed, made and networked.

Offensive cyber capabilities or cyberweapons are, in the simplest terms, instructions surreptitiously delivered into a computer or network of computers that, when followed, cause that computer or network to malfunction. When those computers are connected to physical systems such as an energy grid, an assembly line or military equipment, the results can obviously be destructive. One of the most famous examples is the Stuxnet virus that was used to sabotage more than a dozen Iranian nuclear facilities by instructing uranium centrifuges to spin irregularly; 900 were disabled. Developing offensive cyberweapons relies on closely examining how physical components or devices are networked and identifying vulnerabilities in enabling software that can be exploited to trigger malfunctions. Japanese insights into the future of the global technology supply chain are valuable to AUKUS partners wishing to understand how to target and protect everything from energy grids to missile guidance systems to manufacturing facilities.

Developing those cyberweapons with Japan, however, will depend on overcoming some critical legal and operational hurdles. For one, offensive cyber capabilities have hitherto existed in a grey area concerning Japan’s pacifist constitution, which renounces the right to threaten or use ‘force as a means of settling international disputes’. Greatly expanding the arsenal of cyberweapons available to Japan for defence or deterrence could challenge that position.

Furthermore, like so many of the military capabilities to be developed under AUKUS, there will be questions about to what extent joint development entitles parties to joint planning and joint control over how new weapons and platforms are used in warfare. This is particularly pertinent to offensive cyber capabilities, as many such weapons rely on zero-day or similar exploits that can be used only so many times before being discovered and fixed. How would the AUKUS nations plus Japan coordinate their use of such weapons? Would the nation most responsible for their development have greater say over when and how those weapons are deployed? These challenges are likely to arise with regard to other AUKUS technologies, including nuclear submarines, but offensive cyberweapons are where we are likely to encounter them first. How and to what extent they can be resolved will have important ramifications for the wider security pact, well beyond the cyber domain.

Australia and India should partner up to accelerate the clean energy transition

India and Australia saw a fierce cricket Men’s World Cup final in 2023, but there is an opportunity to bat on the same team—for clean energy transition.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called India and Australia natural partners during his visit to India in March 2023 and had climate change high on the agenda during the G20 New Delhi summit in September. At a time of geopolitical uncertainty, it makes sense to work together in areas, ranging from critical minerals to green steel, that will fuel sustainable economic growth. Furthermore, bilateral collaboration for energy transition is critical, since many multilateral forums and initiatives are failing to address these challenges.

Australia and India both have great potential for energy transition. Australia is blessed with natural resources and India is one of the world’s fastest growing economies; it can also reap the benefits of a demographic dividend. Both have ambitious greening plans, with India’s clean energy, mobility and green hydrogen targets for this decade alone providing an investment opportunity that we estimate is worth US$500–550 billion.

The reliance on each other’s economies makes Australia and India natural partners. In 2022, trade between the two countries totalled US$31.4 billion, with exports from Australia to India making up more than 70 percent. Notably, nearly 80 percent of these exports were natural resources such as coal, gold, copper and natural gas. In critical minerals, Australia is India’s third-largest source of copper ore and the largest trading partner by far for nickel oxides and hydroxide. In collaborating on an energy transition, India and Australia have a unique opportunity to leverage these trading ties.

In the past 12 months, we have already seen increased alignment of Indian and Australian policies. The Australia-India Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement (ECTA), which took effect in 2022, will enable unrestricted trade of most commodities and products. The two countries have also signed a Critical Mineral Investment Partnership, which identified five critical mineral projects that could be jointly developed. On innovation, the Australia-India Strategic Research Fund aims to support research in important areas such as new and renewable energies and resource circularity.

Building on this momentum, India and Australia should collaborate in four ways to support each other’s energy transition.

First, they should join forces to develop critical minerals supply chains. Both countries currently lack the technical expertise in mineral processing and material manufacturing for use in clean energy production and have not been able to fully leverage opportunities of indigenisation. For example, Australia is the world’s largest producer of lithium, and it exports nearly all of it to China, where it is used in batteries. Meanwhile, India imports most of its batteries from China. Developing the domestic mineral resources and raw material production ecosystem could take up to a decade. Striking a balance between imports and developing domestic manufacturing will be critical for an unimpeded yet secure energy transition. Australia and India can complement each other based on their strengths and weaknesses in the clean energy manufacturing value chain.

Second, India and Australia should develop a rules-based architecture for new and emerging sectors such as green hydrogen, critical minerals and clean energy manufacturing. With governments adopting protectionist policies around the world, harmonisation of standards and trade rules for new technologies is critical for maintaining an open, fair and inclusive system. India and Australia should take the lead in standardising and interpreting environmental, social and governance standards and defining key terms such as critical minerals, concentration, diversification and vulnerabilities. They should also leverage multilateral initiatives such as the Quad, Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity and the Mineral Security Partnership to develop a rules-based architecture for the fuels of the future.

Third, Australia and India should collaborate on upskilling their workforces and promoting co-development of technology. High-level skills in mineral exploration, mining, mineral processing and manufacturing clean energy components will be important for raw material value chains. And to make the clean energy supply chain resilient and sustainable, they must prioritise the development of new materials, alternative technologies and recycling processes.

The two countries should build on the ECTA framework to increase the number of exchange programs for university students and faculty members. Academic institutions and industries in both countries could work together in the research and development of technologies needed to process minerals and manufacture raw materials. Australia’s academic and industry experience and India’s burgeoning graduates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics would complement each other in this effort.

Lastly, Australia and India should boost their mutual flows of investment. As recently as 2017, just 0.3 percent of Australian direct investment stocks were in India. This made up just 0.24 percent of India’s total foreign direct investment. Given Australia’s ambitious plans to scale up critical mineral and clean energy value chains, its industries should invest more in India’s growing industrial sector by participating in government initiatives such as India’s Production Linked Incentive scheme.

There is great potential in the improvement and development of new technologies, from mineral mining to clean energy product manufacturing. A strong partnership between India and Australia in an energy transition is like a test match, requiring trust, patience and agile strategy, as well as specialised and complementary skills. Fortunately, this test match will have winners on both sides.

Tech diplomacy: what it is, and why it’s important

We need to get used to a new concept in international security: tech diplomacy. It means technological collaboration across sectors and between countries, but the simplicity of the idea shouldn’t disguise its importance.

Tech diplomacy is a key tool to ensure that US allies and partners, including Australia, can stay ahead of or keep up with the pacing threat of adversaries, notably China, that are also seeking technological leadership.

It also offers opportunities for commercialisation and the establishment of the rules and norms that govern uses.

Technology lies at the heart of geostrategic competition between China and the US. The US and its allies need to secure advantages in emerging technologies to meet ongoing and rapidly evolving national security imperatives. Western societies are also keen to ensure that producers of bleeding-edge technologies—such as advanced semiconductor chips, artificial intelligence and quantum computing—develop, deploy and adopt tools and knowhow in a trusted manner that protects individual and collective freedoms. Technology diplomacy—bringing together expertise from the three traditionally siloed domains of technology, business and foreign policy to advance national interests—is a tool the US and its partners can use to secure high tech and to counter the weaponisation and abuse of technology by malign actors.

Technology is inherently neutral, neither good nor bad, which is why it’s necessary for like-minded allies and partners to advance it in a trusted manner to ensure that it can’t be easily abused to compromise the basic rights and freedoms of individuals as defined under international law. Collaboration that draws on technology, business and foreign policy ensures that the expertise that drives the R&D interacts with the expertise that drives commercialisation and deployment and with the expertise that drives security goals and international regulation. This model of tech diplomacy ensures that the economic advantages of tech leadership are achieved and that technological development is guided by principles of trust that protect individual and collective rights.

Successful tech diplomacy efforts have already taken place, notably with the deployment of 5G networks. 5G technology built the infrastructure that would underpin the future of connective technology, which could significantly affect national security, rights, privacy and economics. Australia was the first mover in banning Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei from building the nation’s 5G networks. One consideration was the potential for China to abuse the network for surveillance; another was how Huawei was changing market dynamics by offering free infrastructure and locking in countries through dependency. Oher market players couldn’t compete. At the time, Huawei was outcompeting its peers, Nokia and Ericsson, because it was reaping the benefits of spending, supported by the Chinese government, of US$20–25 billion a year on R&D.

Tech diplomacy occurred when efforts led by Australia and allies recognised the shared importance to their national interests of having competitive alternatives to Huawei 5G networks and collaborated, including with industry, to secure them. Notably, efforts by the US, such as the Clean Network implemented by the US State Department, led to collaboration of public-sector and private-sector leaders in 60 counties and 200 telecommunication companies to pursue 5G providers and alternatives to Huawei.

The scale of international public-private collaboration demonstrated by the deployment of 5G technologies worldwide is vital to advancing tech diplomacy and establishing, adopting and sustaining trusted principles to guide the innovation and adoption of other critical and emerging technologies.

AUKUS, the enhanced security agreement between the US, Australia and Britain, is available to advance tech diplomacy efforts. Under Pillar 2 of AUKUS, the partners will engage in advanced capability sharing in areas such as AI, hypersonics, quantum and cyber. Pillar 2 will bring together government and industry across the AUKUS partners to develop and use cutting-edge technologies. This avenue of collaboration offers not only a robust means to accelerate innovation in emerging technologies to counter China’s technological advances; it can also ensure unified leadership in standards-setting and best practice. The close cooperation with industry that AUKUS necessitates can only strengthen the success of tech diplomacy efforts to ensure that those technologies are brought online in a way that doesn’t present a risk to freedom and security.

For Australia, tech diplomacy and its engagement across government, industry, academia and civil society strongly aligns with the whole-of-nation approach defined in the National Defence Strategy announced in April 2024. Only through this level of collaboration can innovation and adoption occur at the pace and scale needed to outcompete China’s strategy of military-civil fusion, which includes China’s acquisition of, and heavy subsidies for, its own tech sector for state purposes.

Independent initiatives, notably the launch of the Tech Diplomacy Academy (TDA) by the Krach Institute at Purdue University in the United States on 30 April 2024, signal the importance of integrating technological, commercial and foreign-policy expertise to guide the trajectory of trusted tech towards advancing freedom, security and prosperity worldwide.

The TDA is an online education platform poised to revolutionise how government, business, tech and civil society leaders are trained at scale on critical and emerging technologies and how to compete and lead in a contested technological and geopolitical landscape. The US government’s support for the initiative (the State Department has announced its adoption of the TDA) affirms the importance of equipping government officials with the knowledge and tools needed to support critical and technology industries and to ensure allied leadership in those sectors.

Trusted partnership and the ability to collaborate without compromising the agility and ingenuity of the private sector are strengths that the AUKUS partners share. Successful tech diplomacy is a key enabler for leveraging those strengths, ensuring that leadership in critical and emerging technologies is secured and that those technologies are brought online in a trusted and sustainable manner that protects the interests and safety of the individuals affected by them.

Why the US will stay dominant in undersea warfare

A number of commentators in Australia have lately made rash pronouncements about the demise of US submarines, alleging that innovative technologies will make the vessels vulnerable. Others have been arguing that US nuclear-powered submarines are now noisier than their Chinese counterparts and will be easily detectable by China. 

The fact is that the United States has been so far ahead in submarine technology and secure underwater operations over the past 50-plus years that its submarines are virtually undetectable by either China or Russia. In the Cold War, US attack submarines (SSNs) tailed Soviet ballistic–missile firing submarines (SSBNs) at close quarters without being detected. There is every reason to believe that the same applies these days to China’s SSBNs. It is our view that China’s SSBNs are so easily tracked by US SSNs that China’s allegedly survivable second-strike nuclear capability is at high risk (as was that of the USSR in the Cold War). In brief, the quietness of US submarines and the sophistication of their operations are legendary. 

The reason for this is that for more than half a century the United States has persistently poured vast amounts of research and development into superior underwater warfare technology. Naturally, these capabilities are among the United States’ most highly guarded secrets, so little information about them is in the public domain. However, we recommend two books: Blind Man’s Bluff by Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew (1998) and The Silent Deep: The Royal Navy Submarine Service since 1945 by Peter Hennessy and James Jinks (2016). The former is about highly classified US submarine operations involving the CIA tapping into the USSR’s seabed communications in the sea of Okhotsk for the Soviet Pacific submarine fleet in Kamchatka. US submarines made repeated visits and were not detected. The Silent Deep covers close–quarter submarine operations against Soviet SSBNs and SSNs by British nuclear submarines, whose reputation is similar to US submarines’. To our knowledge, there is no equivalent book available about operations against China’s submarines yet (but the subject is touched on by Michael McDevitt’s China as a Twenty First Century Naval Power, 2020). 

Those who talk about superior Chinese submarine operations being able easily to detect US submarines do not know what they are talking about. The fact is that until recently China has depended very much on Russian technology for its SSBNs and SSNs. That includes even such relatively straightforward techniques as isolating the noise of engines and other machinery from the hull. We need to remember that in the Cold War Soviet ballistic–missile firing submarines were known as boomers because their loud noises were detectable over very considerable distances. As for China dealing with US submarines, the Pentagon stated in 2023 that China ‘continues to lack a robust deep-water anti-submarine warfare capability.’ 

It is true, of course, that both Russia and China are making progress towards quieter submarine operations. But do we believe that the United States is sitting on its hands and making no technological advances? Of course not. The US Navy continues to invest huge amounts in ensuring that its submarines remain at the absolute forefront of hard-to-detect operations under the world’s oceans. 

So, when we take delivery of our three Virginia–class SSNs from the US, we can be confident that they will be both highly effective and difficult to counter. This is why China is so angry about the prospect of our acquiring them. China already has a bad case of SLOC anxiety (worrying about its sea lines of communication). It fears loss of critical supplies, such as oil, that come through the confined waters of Southeast Asia.  

Things will only get worse for China when Australian SSNs enter service and when, under AUKUS, the US operates its own SSNs out of Fremantle. Further, if our Virginias are equipped with current long-range anti-ship missiles with a range of more than 2000km, they will be formidable strike weapons able to attack deep into our region. For example, 2000km is about the distance from east of the Philippines to the Yellow Sea between South Korea and China.  

Geography makes Chinese and Russian submarines relatively vulnerable when leaving base. In China’s case, the Northern Fleet is bottled up in the Yellow Sea. The sea is intensely surveilled by South Korea (which is just 400km from one Northern Fleet base, Weihai) and by Japan (which is 800km from the main base, Qingdao). Both are US allies.

Beijing’s main SSBN base is on Hainan, an island in the south of China from which submarines must move through relatively shallow waters until they reach deeper sea closer to the Philippines and Taiwan. And, to get to the deep waters of the Pacific Ocean, they must then pass through a chain of US SOSUS seabed sonar arrays that extends from South Korea and Japan to Taiwan, the Philippines and Indonesia. 

The United States, by contrast, has submarine bases on its east and west coasts that provide prompt access to secure deep waters in the open Pacific and Atlantic oceans. It has no potential adversaries nearby. Similarly, submarines leaving such Australian ports as Sydney and Fremantle also have quick access to secure deep oceanic waters. 

It is important to remember that keeping a capability edge in pro- submarine and anti-submarine warfare is vital for US security. This is especially true with respect to nuclear capabilities, the stability of the nuclear balance and the survivability of US SSBNs. That is why the US continues to invest heavily in such matters as submarine signature management (including radiated acoustic signatures), sensor performance and upgrades of the Mark 48 torpedo (including through joint research with Australia). 

Against this background, we reject the belief of those who say that US submarines have had their day. The United States has the world’s largest and most potent nuclear-powered submarine fleet and intends to keep it that way. No wonder that China is so worried about the prospect of Australia acquiring such a vastly superior capability.  

Australia must act now on its crisis of male violence and misogynist ideology

NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb has said it was ‘obvious’ that the Bondi shopping centre killer, Joel Cauchi, was targeting women. 

The Victorian town of Ballarat is reeling after three women were murdered within a few months. Former test cricketer Michael Slater has again been charged with a range of crimes relating to assault, stalking and intimidation of a woman. 

These are just a handful of cases that were in the media last week. There are new headlines this week. 

Yet Australia has failed to maintain a serious, national and ongoing conversation about violence against women. A renewed conversation must galvanise change and action that includes combatting the subset of violence that is driven by a misogynist ideology. 

The federal government should seriously consider setting up a royal commission. This would pour sunlight on this crisis and generate independent recommendations across a suite of crucial issues. The government should also hold all social media companies to a higher standard, look at hate speech laws and clarify the types of violent extremism that are subject to terrorism laws. 

Australia’s 2022-23 National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children described violence against women—often a physical expression of misogyny—as ‘a problem of epidemic proportions’. 

As Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said in a recent major speech: ‘We have a crisis of male violence in Australia. It is a scourge in our society and it must end.’ 

So far this year in Australia, more than one woman per week has been killed by a male perpetrator (11 more than this time last year). And Indigenous women are eight times more likely to be murdered, with scores of cases remaining unsolved.  

Misogynist hate speech in Australia has become all too normalised. Often driven by a view that equality for women and diverse groups means inequality and disadvantage for men, an incredible 23 percent of Australian men find it acceptable to use sexist or misogynistic language online. The same survey also found almost one in five Australian men said it was acceptable to share intimate images of a woman online without her consent. 

Hate speech is flourishing online, especially across social media platform X, less-mainstream platforms and unregulated forums such as 4chan and incel forums. Incels are a thriving global Internet community of men who identify as involuntary celibates, a subset of which are ‘misogynist incels’ who hold more extremist views, including actively dehumanising women, glorifying violence and adhering to a male-supremacist ideology. 

So far, there is no public evidence that the Bondi killer engaged with or was inspired by incel ideology, and a key focus has instead been the state of his mental health. Nevertheless, some incels are celebrating and glorifying the horrific event online. 

A recent ASPI research report on incels examined how online spaces, from popular social media sites to dedicated incel forums, provide a platform for the expansion of misogynistic views and gender-based violent extremism. Adults with such ideological views have a platform for unfettered expression and impressionable or curious teenagers can access this filth in seconds. And Australians are indeed accessing these sites: the ASPI report showed Australians visited one particular incel forum more than 42,000 times between April and June 2022 alone (accounting for 1.8 percnet of the website’s traffic during that short period).

Of course, not all violence against women is ideological. But, at times, law enforcement has been too quick to rule out, or even consider, misogynistic and Incel ideological motives in violent cases.  

In February 2021, Matthew Sean Donaldson invited a 26-year-old sex worker up to his five-star hotel room in Sydney. Donaldson had read numerous articles about women being murdered. He used a knife to remove the woman’s undergarments and, after a debate about the morality of sex work, the 43-year-old struck the woman multiple times with a hammer. He left her with significant head and body wounds, then sent her a message that read, ‘You should have chosen a different profession, dear.’ 

Donaldson was diagnosed with schizophrenia in his late 30s and is now being treated with medication. He had also been an active trawler on Incel sites. At the time, NSW Police did not consider whether Donaldson was also motivated by an ideology driven by misogyny. 

We have become far too accustomed to many of the extremist misogynistic behaviours that underpin much of Australia’s crisis of male violence. 

The Albanese government has given more policy attention to these threats, but events this year have made it clear Australia needs to take more urgent and decisive action. 

 The Australian government should include gender-based hatred and advocating violence against women under the definition of criminal hate speech. The federal government should also clarify that ideologically motivated male supremacist misogynistic violence can be subject to our existing terrorism laws. 

The Australian government must also hold social media companies more strictly to account—both big platforms and the less mainstream ones that often escape attention from Australian regulators—for hate speech, harassment and viral disinformation.  

Finally, the Australian government must give urgent consideration to establishing a Royal Commission into gender-based violence, including misogynistic violence. 

A Royal Commission could investigate this violence in all its forms—domestic violence, harassment, sexual assault, stalking, coercive control, online abuse and homicide. The commission would need to examine a range of issues including the use of online and artificial-intelligence technologies in such crimes as well as the resourcing and accessibility of our mental health systems to those who need it. It would need to look at extremist ideologies that come in the form of lone wolves with fixations or internet subcultures that promote and encourage violence against women. 

All these topics need greater attention, resourcing and a joined-up approach from law enforcement, policy and security agencies, welfare bodies and community groups. These are difficult challenges, but we know similar royal commissions on disabilities, child sexual abuse and aged care have helped shift the dial on systematic and complex issues. 

A Royal Commission would give this epidemic the national attention it deserves, and it would help inform and lead the national conversation that Australia needs.

Tech industry is the new defence industrial base

Developments in nascent technology areas such as quantum computing, biotechnology and artificial intelligence (AI), are predominately happening in the private sector, where there is a higher concentration of talent, capital and competition.  

The United States and allies must become better at encouraging tech companies to consider dual-use applications both as a commercial opportunity and as a matter of national security. 

China is ahead of the game. In its bid to have the most technologically advanced military in the world, Beijing applies a strategy of military-civil fusion to boost its military and defence capabilities, using civilian research and heavily subsidising domestic commercial sectors. China also tries to harness global commercial capabilities through intellectual property (IP) theft and strategic adversarial investment in the US private sector, threatening US and allied leadership in bleeding edge technologies.  

The effects of China’s strategy are being felt by the US tech sector. According to discussions between industry and government at events held by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute at in March, investors are unable to compete with the Chinese capital being thrown at emerging dual-use start-ups in quantum computing, microelectronics, biotech and AI. 

To meet the challenges posed by China, the US must use its strengths—the agility of its private sectors, capacity for innovation and market viability. This is critical in adopting commercial technologies at a speed and scale that meets national security needs. 

So far, the US government has made some efforts to harness the tech sector. In 2021, the Trusted Capital Digital Marketplace (TCDM) was created to establish ‘trusted sources of funding’ for small and medium-sized business, offering alternatives to adversarial investment in innovative defence-critical capabilities. This should complement other initiatives such as the Office of Strategic Capital, which helps to attract private capital in support of national security through public-private partnerships and to underwrite high risk investments in emerging technologies. However, TCDM has stalled in recent years, and needs to be revamped at scale in partnership with allies as part of security agreements such as AUKUS.  

Under AUKUS, the US, Australia and the Britain have begun to prioritise partnership with industry. Under AUKUS Pillar 2 which focuses on advanced capability sharing, the three countries have endorsed a defence investor network and established an industry forum. The US has also reduced barriers to start-ups and SMEs entering the defence market, as evidenced by the proposed amendments to the International Traffic in Arms Regulations for AUKUS partners, under the National Defense Authorisation Act (NDAA) passed in December 2023.  

But the US and allied governments need to do more to support innovation in emerging technologies, and bolster public-private collaboration early in the process. They should identify tech start-ups relevant to national security, and ensure that they continue to meet defence needs as they grow and stay free of adversarial capital. This will contribute towards increased innovation and more rapid scaling and help US and its allies becomeI leaders in critical technologies. 

Specifically, the US and allies should identify existing hubs of public-private innovation and build on their activities. One example is Capital Factory, a technology incubator in Austin, Texas. Its partners include the US Army Future Command, which leads the army’s modernisation efforts, and AFWEX, the innovation arm of the US Air Force. These relationships enable dual-use technology innovators, investors and end-government users to collaborate, and bring national security considerations into the commercialisation journey at an early stage.  

The US should also broaden innovation partnerships beyond its borders and strengthen its global network of public-private innovation. For inspiration, it should turn to NATO’s Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA), which promotes dual-use innovation capacity across the alliance, and ensures that companies have the resources, networks and strategic advice to develop and scale technologies critical to defence and security challenges. DIANA has over 200 affiliated accelerator sites across Europe. The US could emulate this model in its coordination with innovation hubs such as Capital Factory, and in its innovation partnerships such as AUKUS. 

In partnering with the private sector, the US and its allies must ensure there are sufficient sources of clean capital, free from adversarial influence, that can support commercialisation. In particular, as collaboration on innovation increases under AUKUS, Australia must do more to engage its private sector and mobilise the significant pools of capital sitting in retirement funds. 

Australia’s pension system has the fifth-largest retirement savings pool in the world, managed by traditionally risk adverse superfunds. To outcompete China’s civil military fusion strategy, the Australian government must incentivise the investment of this capital in dual-use technologies that support allied national security interests. It must drive a discussion of the commercial opportunities and national security imperatives of investment in national security, focusing on the dual-use potential of areas such as advanced manufacturing, critical minerals and bio tech. This will help assuage ethical concerns of more risk adverse investors. 

In summary, governments need to be bold and innovative in how they partner at scale with the private sector. They need to collaborate with tech companies at an early stage to align them with national security needs, and ensure there is enough funding to support commercialisation in emerging areas such as quantum, AI and biotech. This is critical in maintaining autonomy over critical technology supply chains, and ensuring that the industry aligns with liberal democratic values and protects users. 

Mobilising the tech sector as the new defence industrial base is an exercise in public-private collaboration and allied partnership. The fact that such conversations were occurring at SXSW, an event not associated with national security, demonstrates that both governments and the tech industry recognise the importance of collaboration for shared national security interests. 

We can do much more with the reserves

We can do much more with the reserves.

The Australian Defence Force reserves are an underutilised resource with great potential to contribute to Australian security.  

The 2023 Defence Strategic Review (DSR) warned that Australia is experiencing its most challenging circumstances in decades, while the ADF rapidly works to adapt to new technology and iterations of combined arms. Leveraging the civilian skill sets, education and experience of reserves across all services will allow Australia to take full advantage of existing capability that might not be available in full-time military service.  

This evolution could take place over three broad areas of contribution: combat, specialist roles and domestic support. 

Combat capability

Research has found a lower expectation of and bias against Australian reservists as opposed to full-time ADF members, potentially leading to inconsistent standards of training and combat effectiveness. Australia may be in a similar predicament to that found by a review by Britain into its own reserve forces, who were used neither effectively nor cost-efficiently in a failure to capitalise on their potential. The Australian Army’s reserve forces have been underutilised in combat roles in recent conflicts in Afghanistan and the Middle East, in contrast to the US’s leveraging of reserve capability. More than 1 million US National Guard members have been deployed to combat theatres since 2001, and members have recently been used in drone operations and intelligence analysis during the war in Ukraine. 

There’s an opportunity for ADF reservists to become more widely used in combat roles either in complementing regular ADF capability or as reserve units deployed to combat and peacekeeping operations. This can be achieved through standardised training curriculums, higher expectations of reserve skill and capability, and increasing combat specialisation. 

For example, army reserve units in certain locations can specialise their training to provide combat capability in particular arenas or unique skill sets, such as littoral warfare or autonomous platforms. Reserves’ use of HIMARS has been recently suggested, while civilian drone operators have begun working for military contractors in the Middle East. A precedent for reserve deployment and specialist training exists within Rifle Company Butterworth, which has seen army reservists complete jungle and urban combat training in Malaysia and Singapore, as well as supporting regional contingency operations and relationship building with military partners. Similar opportunities exist in the Royal Australian Air Force and the Royal Australian Navy to operate autonomous systems or support aerial surveillance and maritime patrols through the Pacific Maritime Security Program. 

These evolutions in capability can be facilitated through changes to recruitment and the role of reservists as part of a refined total workforce model. Certain demographics can be further targeted through tri-service initiatives mimicking the Ready Reserve Scheme or current accelerated training programs. 

Specialised skill sets 

The ADF is seeking to exploit new technologies to maintain asymmetric advantage in an advancing technological era. The Army is looking to implement capabilities such as artificial intelligence, biotechnology and autonomous systems, as outlined in its Robotic and Autonomous Systems Strategy and 2020 Accelerated Warfare Statement. The air force has added to a focus on air power to ensure Australian access to and capability within the space domain through the use of cutting-edge technologies. Pillar 2 of AUKUS will further technological capability within the navy through the use of quantum computing, artificial intelligence and machine learning to address threats in the maritime domain. The navy is also expanding its domain further from Australia’s shores through the planned nuclear-powered submarine capability, while the army’s structure has been reformed towards Australia’s north and shifted towards littoral and long-range strike potential. The chief defence scientist has emphasised the need to get advances in technology into the hands of personnel as fast as possible. Specialist reservists could assist. 

Reserves have deployed to Australian operations in Iraq and Afghanistan as specialist, such as nurses and lawyers; those deployable roles could expand to focus on new technologies and war-fighting domains, such as space and cyber. In these evolving areas of combined arms, there’s potential for reservists to gain experiences and education exceeding those of the regular ADF, in areas such as academic research, policy development, linguistics and the use of future technologies. Research has shown that reservists have unique professional and life experiences, skills and abilities compared to full-time service members, and that capability is ripe for leveraging to bolster Australia’s security. 

Civilians with particular skill sets can be recruited to meet the ADF’s needs through specialist classifications or officer roles not requiring full-time service or leadership taskings, taking an approach similar to the one recommended to the Australian Public Service in competing with the private sector for unique skill sets. In meeting the challenges of the future, the ADF will have a particular need for expertise in areas such as artificial intelligence, cybertechnology and quantum computing and will compete with other employers for those skills. 

Domestic service

The final area in which reserves can contribute to ADF capability is domestic support. The DSR outlined how enhanced domestic security and response capability will be required from the army reserves, but, with increasing tri-service numbers and training, reservists rather than their full-time counterparts could take primary responsibility for the domestic response to natural disasters and crises. That shift would allow the full-time ADF further capacity to focus on war-fighting training and conflict response and could be achieved through improved reserve training and unit specialisation in supporting domains. That could include training in disaster preparedness, firefighting and infrastructure defence.