To convince the public of AUKUS’s value, government and industry messaging should focus on how the program can provide benefits in the near term—not in 20 years. AUKUS is a megaproject that will define the Indo-Pacific security landscape for decades to come. Its communications should reflect its stature.

AUKUS nations struggle to communicate the program’s immediate public benefits, according to industry representatives interviewed for this article and participants in an ASPI USA roundtable on the project’s communications. Focusing on AUKUS’s future deterrence potential is insufficient: most people rarely think about deterrence, let alone its application in the far future. But as AUKUS expands, so will its economic benefits and its ability to bolster civilian technology innovation.

Industry experts believe that they are best equipped to deliver AUKUS communications due to the secrecy and ineffectiveness of government messaging. Roundtable participants disagreed, believing that governments were best suited to lead messaging on their own programs.

In reality, government and industry will need to work together to demonstrate AUKUS’s benefits to the public. Simply talking about providing these economic and technological benefits at some uncertain point in the future will not work and may even create additional public frustration, particularly if further delays and controversies arise.

Public perception of the strengths and weaknesses of AUKUS will depend on the ability of government and industry to balance messaging priorities. Discussing future submarine production and delivery is inadequate alone. Even when there are tangible developments, opportunities for positive messaging are often missed. For example, Australia has provided significant monetary support for US shipbuilding. While this may have been big news in Australia, few in the United States noticed, even though it presented a perfect opportunity to highlight AUKUS nations’ current efforts in the program.

At the same time, controversies around AUKUS will not be forgotten, lessening the program’s potential to be publicly viewed as an economic and technological driver. This is bad news for both industry and governments, who need to attract workers in the high-demand, low-supply job market that is the manufacturing sector. Addressing the labour gap will require an enhanced approach to messaging focused on tangible benefits that are not decades away.

As a start, governments need to improve relationships with industry counterparts, especially in the US where the administration’s America First agenda has made industry experts nervous because of constantly shifting demand signals. Participants at the December roundtable noted that this harm to trust, trilaterally and within each of the partner countries, was detrimental to public perception. If industry entities are uneasy about investing in new jobs and factories, many of AUKUS’ economic benefits will be kicked further down the road. Governments need to do a better job at highlighting and facilitating shared regional growth and investment at the subnational level.

As well as this, there is a strong belief among industry experts that, with state, local, and federal government collaboration, direct engagement with young people will be crucial in defining the success of AUKUS. Young people are the generation who will see the beginning and end of AUKUS, through its wins and failures, for decades to come. Building goodwill now will benefit governments and industries. This will go beyond highlighting that working in manufacturing for AUKUS is working to build Australia’s defence. Groundwork must be laid for young people to build careers in the field.

AUKUS requires a strong base of workers, from welders to computer scientists. Many of the industries contributing to AUKUS are short of qualified talent. With government assistance, trade groups and corporations should increase direct support to scientific labs, students, and research at the collegiate and vocational training level, rather than supporting only military pursuits. Many AUKUS technologies are dual-use, extending far beyond pure military applications, including quantum computing and artificial intelligence.

Funding support for trade and technological skills will be crucial. Welding, for example, is not an easy task and requires significant training. Industries and governments across AUKUS nations can remedy workforce shortages by providing students with scholarships or other financial support in exchange for working in AUKUS-relevant industries.

These approaches can better serve the values and interests of young people as a whole by identifying brilliant individuals who can contribute to essential scientific pursuits. In doing so, AUKUS nations can provide clear and timely evidence of the program’s economic benefits. While we build the foundations for new facilities, we must educate the people who will work in them.