When I left government in 2018 one of my key concerns was that I didn’t think we fully understood the implications of technology for national security.

Technology is going to be a core aspect of the future and it’s not just cyber technology. It’s going to be technology writ large. I believe that we can assimilate this. Game-changing technologies with social implications have been a part of human history during our entire existence as a species.

We tend to think that the time we’re living in is fundamentally different or somehow the toughest. It’s not. There have been game-changing technologies with potential negative second- and third-order effects throughout the history of humanity. We’ve dealt with this before. I believe we can deal with it now. But we’ve got to be willing to sit down and think about it. And we really need to ask ourselves what’s the way forward.

What’s the right answer for the implementation of a technology that will be a fundamental building block for a nation’s economic competitiveness in this digital world that we’re living in?

5G is emblematic of this, because 5G is not just about, ‘I’m going to get a better phone service.’ That’s not the heart of it. 5G is going to enable us to radically address latency issues. We’re going to be able to move massive amounts of data at incredible, stable rates that will give our handheld digital devices the kind of capability and functionality that we take for granted today in our laptops and in our mainframes.

5G is going to underpin all of that, and it’s only one of many foundational technologies that are being developed right now. As I used to say about 5G in our system, ‘Hey, it’s just the wolf closest to the sled.’ It’s emblematic of a broader set of challenges that we’re going to have to deal with over time.

The dynamics we’re seeing now with 5G are prompting the question of how that strategy works when the competition isn’t a single foreign company. The competition now is an integrated national strategy in which that foreign company is just one component. How does a single private company compete against the integrated efforts and resources of an entire nation-state?

A series of technological changes are on the way. They’re going to be so foundational that if we don’t change the dynamic, we’re going to have this conversation over and over again. It’s not about stopping any particular nation or contesting a particular company. This is about ensuring our own and our partners’ competitive ability in the 21st-century digital age. Because, again, you’re going to have to deal with this with other countries and other companies over time. Right now, that happens to be China, Huawei and 5G, but it’ll be something different in the future.

I think the goal is to make sure that the playing field is level. Once we have a level playing field, then it’s up to our private sector. But the challenge right now is that the playing field isn’t level, and it’s really difficult for the West’s firms to compete. And I just don’t think it’s realistic to expect them to do this on their own. Levelling the playing field is going to take work. It’s also about ensuring agreements are adhered to and that there are consequences for clear breaches.

In my new report for ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre I offer up a five-point strategy for western policymakers to prepare for the next wave of disruptive technologies after 5G:

• See technology as a capability, not a product
• Rethink technological competition
• Develop a strategy
• Strengthen our alliances
• Communicate with broader audiences about cyber strategy

We have to be asking ourselves how we need to change our model, because if we think it’s bad now with 5G, I would argue it’ll be worse when 6G comes along in about three years. And it’ll be worse still with artificial intelligence, quantum computing and other new technologies coming down the pipeline right now.

US strategic competition with China has triggered considerable debate about the implications for Australia. Thus far, commentators have judged US President Donald Trump’s approach towards China and the Indo-Pacific mostly negatively. Some analysts have feared a general decline of US leadership and willingness to defend its allies against potentially hostile Asian powers like China. They have called for a ‘radical rethink’ of Australia’s defence policy and the need to prepare for a ‘post-US’ regional order.

For some, Australia should adopt a strategy of ‘armed neutrality’ to deal with an emerging China-dominated region and a US unwilling to defend its allies. Since Australia will soon be ‘without America’, it must develop a truly self-reliant defence policy.

For others, Trump’s ‘pushback’ against China is seen as economically damaging for Australia or, worse, risks dragging Canberra into unwanted US-led wars in Asia. They have also criticised Trump’s China policy as a move towards ‘containment’ and a ‘new Cold War’, and thus incompatible with Australian interests. Some have even proposed getting closer to Beijing because uncertain US strategy towards China ‘will invite hostility from our most important trading partner’.

In contrast, I argue in the Australian Journal of International Affairs that the new era of US–China strategic competition is positive for Australia, and that calls for a major shift in Australia’s security alignment and defence posture are unwarranted. Claims that the Trump presidency means America will cut strategic engagement in the Indo-Pacific and abandon its Australian ally stand on very shaky ground.

The evidence strongly suggests that the US under Trump has not abandoned its long-standing tradition of resisting any major challenger to its Pacific interests. Using a hybrid strategy mix of ‘collective balancing’ and ‘comprehensive pressure’, the Trump administration has pushed back against China in the normative, economic, technological and military domains.

The implementation of the pushback has not been without flaws. For instance, while the US government has emphasised the ideological component of US–China competition, the messaging has been far from persuasive. In particular, recent suggestions by a senior US State Department official about a ‘clash of civilisations’ were unhelpful and rightly rejected by the Australian government.

Moreover, as Hal Brands points out, Trump’s unilateral tendencies risk leading the US onto a path towards becoming an ‘unexceptional superpower’. As well, Trump’s trade war against China and its potential negative fallout for the Australian economy are of concern in Canberra. Finally, effective US competition with China depends on closer cooperation with allies. But Trump’s personal treatment of close allies such as Japan and South Korea often complicates such efforts.

Still, these risks are outweighed by the benefits. For Australia, the prevention of a Sino-centric regional order and continued US leadership in the Indo-Pacific remain key strategic interests. Before Trump took office, many in the Australian strategic community criticised his predecessor Barack Obama for failing to employ a tougher response against China’s assertiveness. Washington has now shifted gears towards comprehensive strategic competition with China, so some degree of disruption is inevitable. Still, there is no evidence of US containment policies against China and concerns about a ‘new Cold War’ in Asia are unwarranted. Likewise, there is no evidence that the administration is accommodating China or looking for a ‘great bargain’ with Beijing.

Instead, I agree with Peter Jennings that the administration’s recent ‘Indo-Pacific strategy’ and other policy documents provide a good framework for the US and like-minded allies such as Australia to increase cooperation in working towards maintaining key elements of a stable, rules-based Indo-Pacific order. In fact, there are no indicators that the ANZUS alliance is in trouble as a result of Trump.

On the contrary, the November 2018 announcement of US cooperation with Australia and Papua New Guinea in the modernisation of the Lombrum naval base on Manus Island can be seen as a mutual pushback against China’s ambitions in the South Pacific. Similarly, the continued build-up of US Marine rotational deployments through Darwin and the first-ever written US nuclear extended guarantee to Australia demonstrate a strengthening of America’s defence commitment, rather than a weakening. So do reports about the prospect of a new port outside Darwin to facilitate greater Australia–US military cooperation.

Moreover, the bipartisan consensus in Washington about a stronger line against China provides a level of consistency and predictability of US strategic engagement in the region beyond Trump. Indeed, the obsession with the president himself overlooks the key roles of the Congress, as well as the foreign and security bureaucracies in underwriting a sustained pushback against China. They also form an important brake on some of Trump’s counterproductive impulses in dealing with allies and partners.

The shift in US China strategy broadly aligns with Australia’s own re-evaluation of its relationship with Beijing. Australia’s ‘reset’ or ‘reality check’ in its relations with China was well underway before Trump took office. The government shares assessments that China has become more authoritarian and won’t liberalise, that it aims to undermine the regional security order and that its influence operations in Australia pose a significant challenge.

A bipartisan consensus has also emerged in Canberra about the need to push back against some elements of Chinese behaviour. This is evident, for instance, in Australia’s leadership on new foreign influence and interference laws, and in persuading its US ally to follow its example in banning Huawei from its 5G network over security concerns.

While the Trump administration’s new course on China creates some uncertainty, Australia should welcome a long-overdue correction of US policy. Consequently, a major realignment of Australia’s security and defence policy isn’t required. Indeed, those frequently claiming US abandonment of the Indo-Pacific region and its allies fail to provide substantial evidence for those claims. And greater strategic competition between the US and China makes such a scenario even less likely.

Australian debates about the geopolitics of the Pacific islands in many ways represent the broad contours of discussions about Australia’s foreign and strategic policy, notably our relations with China. It’s possible to identify two dominant perspectives in these debates.

The first concerns the risk that, over the coming decades, a potentially hostile China establishes a strategic foothold in the Pacific islands from which it could threaten Australia. Preventing this has been identified as one of Australia’s primary strategic interests for the past 30 years. These concerns have recently been heightened by, for example, the assertive stance taken by Chinese Defence Minister Wei Fenghe at the recent Shangri-La Dialogue, or the comment by Professor Yu Lei from Liaocheng University, at a workshop at the Australian National University on 3 June, that it would be helpful for Beijing to have military bases in the Pacific islands to break the ‘encirclement’ of China.

Having been part of conversations about Pacific islands’ geopolitics in Canberra, Washington and Wellington over the past six months, I’m concerned that this viewpoint risks creating self-fulfilling prophecies about the perceived threat posed by China.

The second perspective is characterised by scepticism about what China’s presence in the Pacific islands means for Australia and Pacific island states and criticism of Australia’s increasingly securitised approach to its relations with the region. Concerns about potential militarisation of the region have been heightened by recent Australian defence-related announcements, including the signing of a memorandum of understanding with Papua New Guinea to redevelop the Lombrum naval base on Manus Island.

This perspective emphasises the autonomy and agency of Pacific island states when dealing with China and other external powers, as well as their desire to be ‘friends to all’. My concern is whether Pacific island states will be able to maintain their autonomy, exercise their agency or avoid the wider geopolitical debates.

At the 3 June ANU workshop, participants from Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific islands considered the implications of the changing geopolitics of the region. It was clear from the discussions that Pacific islanders are concerned about being dragged into debates about geostrategic competition that they don’t want to be part of. Pacific islanders are well aware of the consequences of geopolitical competition; the front lines of World War II in the Pacific were largely in their neighbourhood.

It was also clear that Pacific island states don’t always share Australia’s geopolitical perspective. In particular, many don’t necessarily see China as potentially threatening. In fact, Pacific island states have developed ‘tactical, shrewd and calculating approaches’ to exercising their agency in relation to the ‘often ignorant and patronizing attitudes’ of partners such as China and Australia.

And this is an important point for Australians to remember in discussions about the potential for a ‘new Cold War’.  While it’s important not to be too relativistic and treat Australia and China as morally equivalent—one is an (admittedly imperfect) liberal democracy and the other is an authoritarian state—for many Pacific islanders, Australia is not seen as inherently ‘good’.

We can’t assume that our attempts to exercise leadership will result in Pacific islands’ ‘followship’.  Australian colonialism is within the living memory of many Nauruans and Papua New Guineans; Bougainvilleans have vivid memories of Australian-donated helicopters being turned into gunships, and Manusians and Nauruans live with the consequences of Australia’s ‘Pacific solution’.

Most significantly, as Collin Beck, Permanent Secretary of the Solomon Islands Ministry of Foreign Affairs and External Trade, said in his keynote speech, climate change is a ‘death sentence for the Pacific’. Indeed, climate change was recognised as the ‘single greatest threat’ to the region in the Pacific Islands Forum’s 2018 Boe Declaration. Australia’s failure to take serious domestic action to meet its Paris Agreement targets raises questions about our commitment to our Pacific ‘family’.

The most encouraging thing to come out of the workshop was the recognition that there are opportunities for moving the Australian debate forward by addressing the gap between these differing perspectives.

First, while scepticism about the potential consequences of China’s increased presence in the Pacific islands is sometimes characterised as, at best, naive, or, at worst, appeasement, no participant denied the emerging strategic and geopolitical realities facing the region. The contentious debate is around their likely consequences.

Second, Pacific island states want their interests to be respected, and can creatively use their political authority to pursue them when dealing with China, Australia and other partners. Australians need to be circumspect about our ability to exercise influence and not assume that the strategic interests of Pacific island states will necessarily mirror our own.

So instead of Australian debates about the geopolitics of the Pacific islands being framed as a ‘China choice’, they could instead represent a ‘China chance’: the opportunity to identify interesting ways for Pacific island states to exercise their agency to facilitate partners such as Australia, New Zealand and China working together to build confidence and defuse tensions in the region. Given the alternatives, this approach at least seems worthy of further debate.

A global struggle over the future of communications is underway. It is centred on Huawei, China’s ‘national champion’ in communications, and notably its leading role in the emerging technology of 5G. The remainder of 2019 is shaping up to be a decisive period in the struggle; developments in the next few months will determine the terms of 5G’s worldwide adoption.

For the first time in living memory, the United States is facing a strategic challenge to its position at the forefront of communications technology and infrastructure networks. Alarmed by the rapid accretion of China’s influence in the field, the US has taken the initiative against Huawei. Moving decisively against the company across a range of areas, the US government is exploiting Huawei’s principal vulnerability: its continued reliance on the outside world. It is a perfect example of what Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman have dubbed ‘weaponising interdependence’—governments using the characteristics of the globalised economy to further their strategic goals.

On 15 May, President Donald Trump issued an executive order prohibiting the sale of American technology to Huawei and other companies that are ‘subject to the jurisdiction or direction of a foreign adversary’. The US Commerce Department also placed Huawei and its affiliates on a list of entities requiring permission from the department to purchase American technology.

The potential effects of these directions are massive. This is because Huawei remains dependent on a range of American components for its hardware. Critical links in its supply chains, particularly in relation to semiconductors, are based in the US and therefore vulnerable to an embargo. Huawei smartphones, for instance, use radio frequency chipsets supplied by American firms Qualcomm, Skyworks and Qorvo. American suppliers also dominate the specialised markets for photonic modules and antennae Huawei uses in its network hardware.

Although Huawei claims to have stockpiled semiconductors in anticipation of this eventuality, there can be no escaping the magnitude of its implications for Huawei’s operations. The ban is reported to affect 1,200 US suppliers and restrict US$11 billion in annual sales to Huawei. Nor are substitute sources readily available. Japan’s Tokyo Electron, a major supplier of semiconductor manufacturing equipment, has also announced its intention to cease sales to Huawei, despite not being subject to US law. However, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, one of Huawei’s main suppliers, has stated that it will continue its cross-strait sales, while conceding that the US moves ‘certainly will have some impact in the short term’.

The US embargo also has major implications for software. Huawei has virtually no alternative source for the software it relies on. While it has its own chip design unit, HiSilicon, it relies on American electronic design automation software to do so. The chip architecture HiSilicon uses is patented by British company ARM, which has signalled that it will no longer license its patents to Huawei. Google has also declared that it will no longer supply Huawei with the Android OS, which powers three-quarters of the world’s mobile phones, or the suite of Google apps. Huawei now faces the challenge of filling gaping holes in enterprise and consumer software, along with the difficulties it will face manufacturing its hardware without American semiconductors.

The ban on American sales to Huawei came after the company had effectively been frozen out of dealings with important US institutions. Huawei’s ties with American universities, nine of which had received US$10.6 million in ‘gifts’ and research contracts from the company since 2012, were a key target. In August 2018, Trump signed the National Defense Authorization Act, which bars the US government and contractors from using equipment or services provided by proscribed organisations, including Huawei, ZTE, Hikvision and other Chinese enterprises. One of its provisions is that entities that receive federal funding are no longer eligible if they breach the act. This is a serious threat to universities whose research budgets are highly dependent on federal funding. The NDAA has led major US universities, including Princeton, Stanford and MIT, to sever their ties with Huawei.

These measures have effectively closed American higher education to the company, which will no longer be able to access world-leading research relevant to communications technology. Harvesting expertise from the US corporate sector will become more difficult as well, as US authorities are also slowing their approvals of Chinese nationals to secure technical jobs within American semiconductor companies.

No legal mechanism was necessary to block Huawei from supplying 5G network equipment to the major US mobile carriers, which have pledged to source hardware only from ‘trusted vendors’.

The wide range of measures targeting Huawei demonstrates that it is a serious and considered approach; it’s a decisive change in US policy that will have major consequences in both the short- and long term.

In the long term, Adam Segal has suggested that Beijing understands that Washington’s actions against its high-tech ‘national champions’ aren’t temporary but mark a strategic shift towards ‘technology containment’ in response to China’s gains in advanced technology.

Following the Trump administration’s moves against ZTE in April 2018, later softened, Chinese President Xi Jinping advocated the pursuit of self-determination in advanced technology, describing ‘core technologies’ as ‘important instruments of the state’. In July 2018 he told a party committee, ‘China must improve innovation capabilities for key and core technologies and keep a firm hold on the initiative in the development of science and technology to offer a strong technological guarantee for China’s development.’

Along with pursuing self-sufficiency, Huawei may also look for other ways to insulate itself from American measures, such as investing in third-party nations’ technology sectors, encouraging key Taiwanese suppliers to relocate to the mainland, and continuing or escalating cyber-enabled intellectual property theft. However, it is estimated by one expert that it will take China a decade to develop its own semiconductor capabilities, likely at tremendous cost.

Irrespective of the long-term implications for Huawei and China’s technological development, the US actions against the company will have considerable implications for the immediate future. They have plunged Huawei into crisis. Huawei’s engineers are reported to be working overtime in response to the US measures. In the words of one employee, ‘This is a war about China having an independent communications technology industry.’

But the problems Huawei’s now facing cannot necessarily be overcome by the sheer application of labour power. For the first time since the beginning of its meteoric rise on the world stage, the company is facing serious pressure. The coming months will test Huawei’s resilience in a way it has never been tested before.

Anniversaries invite us to put contemporary events into perspective. The 30th anniversary of the crushing of the popular movement in and around Tiananmen Square on 3–4 June 1989 drives home a simple and obvious fact: the Chinese Communist Party is still here and maintains a total silence on 4 June. The strict, Leninist, ideological, intolerant and dictatorial rule of the CCP in China has become resurgent and stronger, backed up by economic might and technical ability. Not only is the CCP not going away, it appears to be getting stronger.

In fact, the party isn’t necessarily stronger. It faces severe challenges at home and brewing conflicts abroad. Much of the domestic repression and international bravado we see in China reflects an anxious effort to ensure the survival of the party-state.

But, for us in the West, the anniversary of the violent repression of peaceful protests in Beijing and other Chinese cities in June 1989 is a reminder and invitation to review the 30 years of our relations with China. We have to deal with the government of the People’s Republic of China as it is, not as we wish it to be.

Scholars have pointed out since the 1990s that economic liberalisation and the opening of China’s markets to world trade would not inevitably lead to democratisation as an automatic effect of a rising middle class. Political and popular opinion was more hopeful, and US President Bill Clinton famously expressed the confidence that China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in December 2001 would lead to liberalisation, an implied promise that China would become ‘more like us’.

It’s only in the past few years that public sentiment has turned and the realisation has sunk in that, somehow, we’ve been cheated. We let China into the WTO on a preferential basis, it made a lot of money, and it didn’t uphold its end of the bargain.

There was no bargain. The CCP knew what Clinton wanted and just assumed it was part of the US’s assault on the party’s rule. So, China’s leaders methodically set about taking the benefits of globalisation without the institutions of political liberalisation or democratisation. The CCP’s steely determination was evident on 5 June 1989.

Thirty years later, it’s clear that the Chinese party-state hasn’t crumbled, as many predicted it would in the early 1990s (and a doughty few announce annually), but has survived, and in many ways is more powerful.

Yet, at the same time, we know the current government in China faces severe challenges from economic stress, social unrest among workers and the left-behind, mounting ethnic tensions, and profound environmental problems of pollution and access to water. This has provoked anxious responses from the party that include brutal repression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, imprisonment of Chinese lawyers for trying to apply Chinese law, and harassment of Marxist youth groups in Beijing’s universities for supporting workers, as well as a harsh but so far ineffective crackdown on endemic party corruption. Given these domestic challenges and the repressive responses of the current government in China, its increasing global power makes it dangerous. Dangerous to its own people, and dangerous to the world.

So, what should we do? We can’t change China fundamentally, but we can influence and modify the actions of the Chinese government in the world. Domestically, we are going to have to respect China’s sovereignty even as we regret and criticise the CCP’s policies. The mass detention camps in Xinjiang deserve concerted and continuous public criticism.

Nonetheless, our job now is not to change China or bring about regime change but to create and enforce the structures and incentives that we feel promote a good global order. Most fundamentally, this means we have got to work together—Australia, Canada, the EU, even the United States—when we can. Liberal countries, liberal democracies have to work together more effectively to promote a peaceful and fair global order. We need to spend less time trying to fix China and more time shoring up our ability to take care of ourselves, our societies and all of our citizens.

In short, we need to play better football. This simple metaphor suggests three ways to respond to the realities of China 30 years after Tiananmen: study the other side, bring our team together, and build a better league—that is, strengthen our China capacity.

We need many, many more citizens in government, business and public life who can read, speak and write Chinese and who have the professional training and career opportunities to build a strong and deep knowledge base about China and Chinese history, culture, politics, economics and military affairs.

We need to welcome, engage and work with our citizens of Chinese descent. They are not the problem; they are an indispensable part of the solution with their cultural knowledge and personal contacts in China’s civil society.

Finally, we need to form a united front of liberal societies to build and defend the rules of fair play. We won’t have the organisational discipline of the CCP’s United Front Work Department, but we will have the more enduring strength of transparency and free societies working in concert.