If the Australian government is serious about tackling trolls, it may need to start giving some thought to the latest effort of Russian President Vladimir Putin and what it says implicitly about Australia’s standing in parts of Southeast Asia.

Labelling Putin’s decision to send a dedicated anti-submarine destroyer, the Admiral Panteleyev, to participate in the first-ever ASEAN–Russia joint maritime exercise as trolling might be jumping to conclusions. The vessel might well have been the best option available from among Russia’s Pacific Fleet for the three-day drills held in Indonesian waters off Sabang, Aceh, this week. The exercise, which Indonesian Defence Minister Prabowo Subianto was reportedly to launch from the Admiral Panteleyev’s deck, is presumably the latest iteration of a series that has seen vessels from the likes of China and the United States stage similar drills with ASEAN-badged flotillas in recent years.

That said, it’s tempting to interpret the selection of an anti-submarine destroyer for an exercise ostensibly to ‘ensure the safety of maritime economic activity and civil navigation’, as Russia’s embassy to ASEAN put it, as a Putinesque taunt given the context in which it was made. This was the 28 October ASEAN–Russia summit, the official communiqué of which ‘encouraged the conduct of joint ADMM-Plus [ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting Plus] exercises amongst our militaries to build trust and confidence and to enhance our capability in addressing common security challenges’.

More to the point, the summit came on the back of the announcement in September of Australia’s plans to acquire nuclear-powered submarines (SSNs) under the new AUKUS pact, a development that some in ASEAN have welcomed but about which others, most notably Indonesia, have expressed serious concerns. Central to Jakarta’s concerns are a perceived threat to the integrity of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the risk of Australia’s planned acquisition causing a regional arms race.

Indonesia’s president, Joko Widodo, reprised the argument that sharpening strategic rivalries were leading to an ‘arms race and power projection’ in his address to the summit. Were this trend to continue, Jokowi reportedly warned, the prospects for a ‘proxy occurrence’ would be ‘very large’. ‘We have to prevent it and avoid it,’ he said, since ‘none of us want to see this situation continue.’

Russia, Jokowi argued, promised to be important in mitigating this risk.

‘I believe that the ASEAN–Russia strategic partnership can prevent this trend,’ he said, and ‘must continue to be a “positive force” and a buffer of stability and peace in the region. The parties’ cooperation would strengthen strategic trust and eliminate the trust deficit. This will be Russia’s major contribution in maintaining stability, peace and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region.’

For his part, Putin saw a commonality in Russia’s and ASEAN’s positions on ‘major world and regional issues’. ‘What is important,’ he reportedly stressed to his ASEAN counterparts, ‘is that we all support equal and mutually beneficial cooperation in the vast Asia–Pacific region.’

For the time being, Russia remains the largest supplier of arms to Southeast Asia, so in this respect its cooperation has brought certain benefits. In the case of Indonesia specifically, the ties extend way back to the days of Sukarno’s dealings with the Soviet Union, provoking more than a little angst in Washington and Canberra at the time. And Russia has been among the prospective suppliers of advanced weaponry such as fighter jets that Prabowo has been exploring since his elevation to the defence portfolio.

Russia also offers ASEAN states the comfort of having another major external actor in the region pledging support for ASEAN’s ‘centrality’ and symbolically treating the South China Sea as part of the global commons rather than a prospective Chinese lake.

But that Jokowi (and others) should see Putin’s Russia in such ‘positive’ terms as a regional actor performing the role of a ‘buffer of stability and peace’ seems exceptionally generous, if not disconcertingly curious. Likewise, given Moscow’s actual behaviour elsewhere in the world, observers could be forgiven for wincing at the summit communiqué’s reference to both sides’ reiteration of the importance of the ASEAN outlook on the Indo-Pacific and its principles of ‘a rules-based framework’, ‘respect for sovereignty’ and ‘respect for international law’.

One explanation for Jokowi’s generosity of spirit presumably lies in his apparent hope that Russia will contribute tangibly to the region’s (and specifically Indonesia’s) development. How an economically stretched Russia might do this, however, is much harder to see than is the case for China, the US, Japan and others in the region, aside from its delivering on promises to expand collaboration on producing its Sputnik Covid-19 vaccine in some Southeast Asian states.

Jokowi’s implicit characterisation of Russia as a neutral player in the great-power rivalries that so worry him also looks naive at best in light of the Admiral Panteleyev’s task immediately preceding its activities off Sumatra. This entailed a joint maritime patrol exercise with China, in which a combined Sino-Russian fleet made a point of circumnavigating Japan. Although the Chinese Ministry of Defence was at pains to claim that the exercise was ‘not targeted at any third parties’, China’s Global Times was far less coy about reporting a ‘Chinese military expert’ describing what took place as ‘a warning to Japan as well as the US’.

Naivety is not a word that springs to mind when pondering Putin. His form would instead suggest that, as he reflected on Jokowi’s thinly veiled allusions to AUKUS submarines, he found the idea of sending to Aceh a warship dedicated to sinking them too delicious to pass up.

Anti-submarine warfare training is, of course, most unlikely to have anything to do with the joint exercise. And no one should draw too many conclusions about Russia’s role in the region’s strategic future based on such an activity and the diplomatic mechanism from which it seemingly emerged. Russia’s historical links to regional states and its lingering hard power will give it some sway, but its real economic weaknesses will necessarily constrain its influence in the region: it simply can’t offer the region’s elites what others can.

Nor should anyone interpret Jokowi’s utterances about Russia’s being a force for good in Southeast Asia as anything other than the sort of nonsense leaders are primed to say at such events.

But that nonsense and the symbolism of the Admiral Panteleyev’s presence in Indonesian territorial waters do point to a problem that Canberra would do well to heed, and that Russia can stoke if given half a chance.

As he stood on the Russian ship’s bridge, Prabowo might not have been too bothered by the prospect of an Australian SSN lurking in waters not far from Sabang decades from now, but his president and others in Indonesia’s foreign policy establishment plainly are. Addressing Indonesia’s non-proliferation concerns, however valid or invalid they may be, needs to be a major part of Canberra’s dealings with Indonesia now and into the future; and that does not mean that Australia should simply abandon its considered defence interests just to unfurrow Indonesian brows.

Australia should also take into account the way it projects itself in the context of the great-power rivalries that are spooking Jokowi and others.

The root of this problem lies primarily in Australia’s political soil, and the longer this problem persists the harder it will be for diplomacy to manage it.

But the more that ASEAN states like Indonesia are given cause for perceiving Australia’s stated efforts towards deterring conflict as just posturing bellicosity out of step with the sentiments of its northern neighbours, the more those neighbours are likely to turn a blind eye to Russia’s manifest shortcomings as a peace-loving, law -abiding partner able to help them keep the rival elephants from trampling them.

And the more opportunities Putin will have to play his trolling games.

The AUKUS agreement with the United States and Britain opens many opportunities to develop the Australian Defence Force in new directions beyond those detailed in the 2020 force structure plan. ASPI executive director Peter Jennings has suggested this ‘AUKUS moment’ allows a fundamental rethink of Australia’s defence policy. It’s important to fully exploit the momentum to explore new capabilities and ease some of the challenges posed by the decision to purchase nuclear-powered submarines for the Royal Australian Navy.

The AUKUS announcement included other important capabilities, notably in enhanced long-range strike weapons, but also in technology sharing in critical and emerging areas. Some of the strike capabilities had already been announced or hinted at. Understanding their advantages and risks is important as their development is considered.

Australia will acquire Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles (TLAMs) for the navy’s three Hobart-class air warfare destroyers. These are likely to be the TLAM Block V with a 1,500-kilometre range that can strike land targets and ships at sea. It is more resistant to jamming than earlier versions and can strike targets even if the missile loses its GPS lock-on. At about US$1.5 million each, TLAMs are relatively cheap, allowing large salvos to complicate an enemy’s defences, particularly if they’re combined with much faster hypersonic missiles that the US–Australia SCIFiRE research partnership could ultimately deliver.

The main challenge for the RAN’s employment of TLAMs is the limited number of vertical launch cells on the Hobart-class destroyers, with only 48 per ship. That will constrain our ability to launch many missiles in a crisis. Some cells must be dedicated to air-defence missiles, such as the Standard Missile-2 and Standard Missile-6. The SM-6 can be used for both land and maritime strike, but at considerably shorter range than the TLAM. And even though the TLAM has a much longer range than the navy’s existing strike capabilities, it’s still well within China’s anti-access and area-denial (A2/AD) envelope, which now extends out to 5,000 kilometres with the DF-26 anti-ship missile.

The key to defeating such threats will be to sever China’s ‘kill chain’ by neutralising its sensor-to-shooter links. That would demand an ability to neutralise China’s space-based and near-space intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities to render its ships ‘deaf, dumb and blind’. AUKUS’s focus on critical and emerging technologies, which was overshadowed by the nuclear submarine announcement, may provide solutions in time.

The agreement included acquisition of the AGM-158B joint air-to-surface standoff missile—extended range, or JASSM-ER, which will be carried by the F/A-18F Super Hornet and, eventually, the F-35A joint strike fighter (operating in non-stealthy ‘beast mode’). That will allow strikes out to 900 kilometres. These missiles are a step forward from the JASSM missiles currently used by the Royal Australian Air Force’s ‘Classic’ Hornets, now being retired, and will add a tactical land-strike capability from the air. They’ll complement the 200 long-range anti-ship missiles, or LRASMs, announced in the force structure plan, which, according to Defence, have a range of at least 370 kilometres, and likely considerably more.

Once again, the goal is to extend the reach of the RAAF’s strike capabilities to reduce crews’ need to penetrate deeply inside highly contested airspace, such as over the South China Sea. But even though these weapons do extend the strike range, it remains limited by the range of the launching platform, which for the Super Hornet is about 700 kilometres without refuelling. Obviously, airborne refuelling can extend that reach. In uncontested airspace, as experienced by crews during Operation Okra over Syria and Iraq, this would enable long-range missions.

However, it’s unlikely that KC-30A tankers could survive in highly contested airspace.

AUKUS also highlighted the previously announced decision to acquire precision-strike missiles giving the Australian Army an ability to undertake precision strike out to a range of 400 kilometres, and it reannounced the ongoing collaboration on hypersonic weapons under the SCIFiRE program.

Finally, it confirmed that Australia’s sovereign guided weapons manufacturing enterprise would proceed with $1 billion in funding. This last announcement is perhaps the most important, given the urgent need to ensure resilience and combat sustainability for a possible major-power war this decade. Such a war could easily be protracted rather than short, so being able to sustain ADF forces in high-intensity operations, perhaps over months or longer, is vital if the ADF is to reduce the risk of having brittle and boutique forces.

These are all positive steps in ADF capability development. They’ll boost Australia’s ability to deter and, if necessary, respond to a major threat from China in this decade. But there are practical challenges that may require further consideration of new force structure options.

The TLAMs, JASSM-ER and LRASM will still require air and naval forces to penetrate deep within China’s A2/AD envelope, where their ability to survive is becoming increasingly uncertain. The ADF will a long-range targeting capability to ensure Australia has sovereign control and won’t have to rely on US systems.

Hypersonic weapons, potentially emerging from the SCIFiRE program, might address the lack of range, but the government needs to look again at the option of hosting conventional precision land-based medium-range and intermediate-range ballistic missiles in northern Australia. They can now be deployed following the collapse of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, and could be developed for both precision land-strike and maritime-attack roles to reduce the effectiveness of Chinese A2/AD capabilities.

And longer-range air platforms need to be considered. The decision to establish a production facility for Boeing’s uncrewed Loyal Wingman was announced shortly after AUKUS. The Loyal Wingman will extend the RAAF’s strike range considerably, beyond that offered by the F-35A or the Super Hornet, but it needs to be scaled up in size, payload and performance. Then it could offer the RAAF something much closer to a regional strike capability, better even than what it had with the F-111 combat aircraft.

Now that the US will help Australia acquire precious nuclear-propulsion technology, it’s worth asking for the B-21 long-range bomber. That would give Australia a serious strike capability and elevate our role alongside the US to shape, deter and respond to rising challenges from China in an increasingly fraught future.

On 13 September, just days before the announcement of the AUKUS arrangement, Australia’s and South Korea’s foreign and defence ministers met in Seoul. The week before, South Korea displayed a new conventional submarine able to launch long-range ballistic missiles—and on 15 September North Korea test-launched two long-range ballistic missiles, notably while Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi was in Seoul. The implications of the dizzying speed of these events will take some time to play out, but it’s clear that here too the regional pace of change has accelerated.

If the AUKUS decision marked a significant strategic shift for Australia, what impact will it have on Australia’s security relationship with South Korea, a formal ally of the US and solid partner of the UK that’s located uncomfortably close to China?

All four previous Australia–Korea 2+2 meetings were marked by lengthy joint statements of shared views on a wide range of issues rather than concrete commitments.

The fifth was no different, with a series of largely unspecific promises to ‘cooperate on existing and evolving security threats’; to establish ‘dialogues’ on cyber, critical minerals supply chains and space policy; ‘to explore new institutional foundations to promote enhanced future defence cooperation’ (an intriguing formulation, left unexplained); and to continue cooperation on defence industry and materiel. In short, a lot of discussion, but few decisions.

But they agreed to increase joint exercises, training, port calls and aircraft visits to improve interoperability. That’s progress, even if, as is likely, modest. The recent conclusion of a potentially useful memorandum of understanding on mutual logistics support and cooperation was noted. Defence research, testing and evaluation appears to have finally got some limited traction, although we’re left to guess about its content. Defence Minister Peter Dutton separately said planning for a new infantry exercise was well advanced, without explaining how regular and intensified bilateral training on each other’s territory (outside the United Nations Command framework) could be conducted while Korea resists negotiating a visiting forces agreement with Australia.

So, the result continues a pattern of modest incremental gains, despite being billed as a meeting of ‘natural partners with shared strategic interests’ facing an ‘uncertain’ strategic environment. Doubtless the Korean government’s unwillingness to risk offence to China underpinned its reluctance to build a more substantive pattern of defence interaction with Australia, while Australia, which has arguably rarely given the Korean relationship the priority it merits, was no doubt focused on the impending announcements in Washington.

Perhaps the most specific, if indirect, reference in the statement of the growing challenges from China to the strategic environment was the ministers’ agreement on ‘upholding freedom of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea … in accordance with international law, including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea’. Ministers called for the code of conduct for the South China Sea to be consistent with international law, to not prejudice the rights and interests of third parties, and to reinforce the existing inclusive regional architecture.

For two countries so heavily dependent on trade through the South China Sea, this was the minimum—but apparently also the maximum—on which, publicly, they could agree in the joint statement.

Australia’s decision to develop a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines, to arm them and other naval and air assets with long-range missiles, and to cooperate with the US and UK on advanced technology is not dissimilar to key parts of Korea’s own ‘Defense Reform 2.0’ program.

The program now goes well beyond capabilities necessary to deal with the North Korean threat and includes construction of an aircraft carrier and submarines able to launch missiles with ranges well beyond the peninsula. Following US President Joe Biden’s decision in May to remove range limits on Korea’s production of missiles, Seoul is developing local construction of a new generation of cruise and other missiles. They offer a more resilient strike and missile-defence capability against the North in the event of a renewed conflict on the peninsula, but they also offer Korea other options.

Three forces are driving this.

Seoul was deeply unsettled by former president Donald Trump’s transactional approach to the US–Korea alliance and his exorbitant claims for increased sharing of the costs of US forces on the peninsula, threats to reduce US force levels, and arbitrary cancellation of joint exercises during his talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Korea’s confidence in the durability of the American commitment to its security has been shaken, and the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and readiness to incur the wrath of major NATO partner France won’t have helped restore it. Korea fears a US in retreat globally and worries that, despite the Biden administration’s commitment to repair alliances and build a robust Indo-Pacific policy, ‘America first’ may extend well beyond Trump and the Republican Party—and that Trumpism could return.

Second, and related to this, Korea is building a significant defence industry of its own, less reliant on US platforms. Already, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Korea has moved into the top 10 defence exporters globally. It intends to develop Korean-made missile defence, an independent satellite surveillance and reconnaissance capability, enhanced cyber defence, military drones, artificial intelligence and robotics. In short, it’s embarked on building a technology-intensive defence capability independent of the US.

Some in Korea are again arguing for it to develop nuclear weapons, and Seoul might see Canberra’s nuclear-propulsion decision as reason to consider developing its own. Unlike Australia, Korea has a sophisticated civil nuclear industry as a platform should it decide to do so. The issue of sovereign control is a live one in Korea, seen most obviously in its ongoing determination to be able to assert operational control of joint US and Korean forces during wartime.

The third force driving this is Korea’s intent to develop an ‘omnidirectional’ defence strategy for countering threats to its sovereignty from other than only North Korea. Clearly, Korea has China principally in mind and is developing capabilities that can reach well into the Chinese mainland. But it also sends signals to Japan, where Korea has been unable, and arguably unwilling politically, to repair longstanding grievances.

So, it’s time to view Korea as a significant regional player rather than largely a US client myopically focused on the Korean peninsula. Australia and Korea have embarked on different defence developmental paths, but the ‘natural partners with shared strategic interests’ need to review the potential advantages from closer bilateral integration. Australia has committed to buy Korean howitzers and may buy Korean armoured personnel carriers, but we need to consider Korea beyond capabilities best suited to the last war rather than to the next one. Samsung, LG and Hyundai, among others, should remind us that Korea is at the forefront of technological development, increasingly an innovator rather than a ‘fast follower’.

But how Seoul will view AUKUS in terms of Korea’s bilateral partnership with Australia remains to be seen. If it senses that alliance relationships are increasingly two-tiered or that Australia has retreated into an Anglo-American alliance at the cost of further developing its regional security and other relationships, there could be limits to the extent to which our bilateral defence cooperation could develop. And Korea, although sharing deep concerns about China, will be uncomfortable about association with their public articulation.

After the 2+2, and despite Australia’s inevitable preoccupation with operationalising AUKUS, both partners must lend substance to the ‘cooperation’, ‘commitments’ and ‘dialogues’ the joint statement foreshadowed. It’s in their ‘shared strategic interests’ to do so.

Last week’s surprise AUKUS announcement by the United States, Britain and Australia has created a frenzy of focus on nuclear-powered submarines, but the bigger picture is getting lost in a sea of naval analysis.

The real potential of AUKUS lies in how the new grouping can be leveraged in the long term to help us deal with the profound technological disruption about to sweep the world.

Modern warfare and geopolitical competition will be marked not just by military action and conventional deterrence, but by ‘hybrid threats’—cyberattacks and data theft, disinformation and propaganda, foreign interference, economic coercion, attacks on critical infrastructure and supply-chain disruption, among others.

Submarines alone won’t counter these threats—nuclear-powered or not—and analysis that focuses only on Australia’s future fleet (or France’s furious reaction) is missing the bigger picture about what AUKUS could and should mean. It has been set up as an information- and technology-sharing arrangement that will focus on critical technologies such as artificial intelligence and quantum. Key to this will be efforts to foster deeper integration of security- and defence-related science, technology and industrial bases, as well as supply chains, which are increasingly open to disruption and coercion.

The AUKUS leaders’ statement doubles down on the importance of the Indo-Pacific, a region where hybrid threats are becoming far more pervasive, in large part because of the Chinese state’s increasingly assertive and aggressive behaviour there.

As the first initiative under AUKUS, nuclear-powered submarines will give our navy a future edge over adversaries.

But far beyond submarines, AUKUS could give Australia a strategic and technological boost for decades.

Few have grasped the enormity of the disruption coming our way as more and more new technologies—from increasingly sophisticated surveillance technologies to quantum and biotechnologies—continue to be deployed across the world. While governments grapple with foreseeing the full impacts and setting policy direction, there’s a growing realisation that emerging and critical technologies will be extraordinarily important for societies, economies and national security.

This is making the race to master them a geopolitical issue. And nowhere is this race more contested than in the Indo-Pacific region, which incubates much of the world’s technological innovation and has become a hotbed of strategic technological competition.

As we have just witnessed with the construction of AUKUS, governments with foresight and policy capability are now making big and quick bets on future technologies, and new groupings or ‘minilaterals’ (like the Quad) are providing vital vehicles to do so. Many are also doing their best to preserve their intellectual property, broaden their research and development base, invest in university sectors and build expertise by attracting and retaining global talent.

But just as AUKUS is not only about submarines, neither is massive technological change only about geopolitics and conflict. At a national level, governments are struggling with how to relate to the commercial sector.

Global debate is raging over who should make the rules when it comes to issues like data protection, privacy, social media and tech standards—governments or industry? It’s sometimes both, and sometimes neither, leaving policy patchy, citizens vulnerable and democratic processes open to interference.

The Chinese state is investing heavily in technologies that it deems to be future-defining—everything from e-commerce to military and space technologies. Simultaneously, the government is also reining in the country’s tech giants for flying too close to the sun, at great cost to the economy, innovation and investor confidence.

In the world’s tech superpower, the US, there’s ongoing talk about the need to break up its big tech conglomerates in an effort to reduce market domination. President Joe Biden has said that social media platforms ‘are killing people’ for allowing misinformation about Covid-19 vaccines to spread.

As if these strategic challenges weren’t already complicated enough, the pandemic has illustrated just how vulnerable states are to weaknesses in global supply chains and has reignited global efforts to build up sovereign technological capability. And in a world where trade is being used as a weapon of coercion, states are also focusing attention on the capabilities of like-minded partners that might be able to fill gaps if supplies from hostile states are cut off. So it’s no surprise that supply chains are a key focus for AUKUS.

Covid-19 has also proved to governments that investment in often overlooked sectors—biotechnology and high-tech manufacturing, for example—could mean the difference between life and death for thousands or even millions of their citizens. Then there’s climate change, which threatens us all. It’s in the world’s collective interest to come together on solutions, which will have to include more public–private collaboration on technologies that could hold the key to our collective survival.

The threats and opportunities posed by technologies are increasingly global in nature. And yet there’s no multilateral forum where governments, business and civil society can come together to deal with these disruptive challenges.

Right now, three big problems must be addressed to ensure the stable development of advanced technologies. First, there’s a large lag between the deployment of new technologies and regulation. With social media, the lag was about a decade. As we’ve seen, this doesn’t lead to good outcomes for individuals, or for societies. In the policy vacuum, companies have been left to arbitrate on everything from defamation and personal disputes to whether certain presidents should be allowed to tweet.

Second, there’s a delay between states’ use of new technologies and society’s consideration of the ethical questions raised by their use. Examples of this can be seen in the global surveillance industry, which has allowed its products to support some of the most egregious human rights abuses of our times.

Third, a tense relationship between governments and technology companies is playing out around the world. The negative dynamic that has taken hold is hindering progress and genuine cooperation, leaving democracies at risk of being left behind.

Left unaddressed, these problems will mean we are unlikely to develop the breakthrough technologies of the future, or to see them rolled out in a way that supports ongoing international stability.

Developments such as AUKUS are important as they’ll help coalesce focus on the technologies themselves, while also encouraging greater technology collaboration.

A better and more global approach is needed for managing the next wave of highly disruptive technologies. And Australia needs to ensure that, particularly in the Indo-Pacific, we’re working hard to lead the way.