At the end of 2022, Australia’s Indo-Pacific policy is much better calibrated than in recent years. But the right balance between deterrence and engagement remains elusive. An inherent tension between the two concepts was apparent in the public outcomes of the separate talks earlier this month between Foreign Minister Penny Wong, Defence Minister Richard Marles and their American and Japanese counterparts.

After the AUSMIN talks in Washington, the comments to the media by the two defence principals were more outspoken about the dangers posed by China than those made by the two foreign policy principals.

While the AUSMIN communiqué contained a lot more than defence-related material, media reporting inevitably focused more on the military aspects of the relationship with the US—particularly Australia’s acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines under the AUKUS pact and Japan’s inclusion in some trilateral activities in Australia—than on its other elements.

The best result in Washington did not emerge from the meeting itself, but from a speech by Wong to the Carnegie Endowment think tank. She spoke forthrightly of the current strategic challenges in the region. But she also alluded to the lack of enthusiasm there for great-power competition and the aversion of its members to being asked to take sides. Key messages were about the importance of assisting regional countries to build their resilience and of their having agency in decisions that affected them.

The meetings in Japan fleshed out the agreements reached by prime ministers Anthony Albanese and Fumio Kishida in their declaration on security cooperation in October. Importantly, there were extensive references in the communiqué to cooperation in the Pacific. There was no reference to Japan being associated with some of the technology-transfer aspects of AUKUS as had been suggested in Washington. The Japanese like to line up their ducks before making major statements.

These meetings in Washington and Tokyo took place after what was widely acknowledged as a successful and well-modulated round of meetings in November by Albanese at global and regional summits in Southeast Asia, including his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, which restored an element of stability to our dealings with China.

However, the prominence of the deterrence aspects of our policies will inevitably remain pronounced as the defence strategic review headed by former defence and foreign minister Stephen Smith and former defence chief Angus Houston unfolds and while the submarine question looms large (one assumes for quite a while). A government cannot commit large sums of money to defence without copious comment as to why it is needed.

And there will be some overflow from the United States as the presidential electoral season with all its accompanying hype gets underway.

This emphasis on deterrence—and the jagged rhetoric that can accompany it—overshadows the importance of engagement and raises two major issues.

The first is obvious. We need a bit more emphasis on engagement with China and bit less on deterrence if we are to have a less contentious relationship with that country (accepting the need for Chinese reciprocity). Our own economic interests and indeed security interests are at stake here. Moreover, if we want the Chinese to conduct themselves less forcefully in the region, we at least must be able to readily talk to them.

Second, we have already lifted the level and quality of our engagement with Southeast Asia. But we need to think harder about where American, Australian and, to a lesser extent, Japanese deterrence policies leave Southeast Asia—the most important area of Sino-American competition.

At least four significant Southeast Asian nations—Indonesia, Malaysia and, more privately, Thailand and Singapore—don’t much like AUKUS and are lukewarm on the Quad.

But this is not the predominant issue for them. The bigger worry for Southeast Asia is that American approaches to Taiwan—with which we and Japan are associated—could provoke hostilities with China.

For the most part, the Southeast Asians don’t see a Chinese attack on Taiwan as likely, at least in the near or medium term. However, this view would change rapidly if the talk in some circles in America of abandonment of the policy of strategic ambiguity (avoiding a categorical commitment to defend Taiwan) or even forgoing the one-China policy, became a reality.

There is also concern in much of Southeast Asia—and indeed elsewhere—about American thinking on supply-chain decoupling and ‘friend-shoring’ or ‘ally-shoring’ (encouraging companies to shift manufacturing away from authoritarian states, mainly China, and towards friends and allies).

There are dangers here. Do we want to have a split in Southeast Asia between those whom the Americans favour and those whom they don’t (accepting a need to maintain pressure on Myanmar)? What do we do about friends such as Vietnam, or even India, whose internal policies many would disagree with?

As a middle power, we are not a prime mover in the region. But we have influence. Over the next year or so, we will be better able to exercise this influence if the importance of balance becomes a more significant factor in our thinking. Deterrence is all very well, but it should very clearly be just one element in a wider external strategy, not the strategy itself.

Solomon Islands is now more than 60 police vehicles and 60 semi-automatic rifles richer. In a demonstration of Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare’s leverage of geostrategic competition, he squeezed in handover ceremonies from both Australia and China in one week. But the influx of kit has left lingering questions about the benefit of this equipment, including if sustainment costs aren’t supported. It leaves Australia in a tricky situation—how do we maintain our position as security partner of choice, manage strategic competition and ensure the best outcomes for the people of Solomon Islands?

It’s worth recalling how rapidly the Solomons’ relationship with the People’s Republic of China has changed. Honiara switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 2019. Since then, the relationship has entered uncharted waters with the signing of a bilateral security agreement in March 2022 to enhance security cooperation. A Chinese police liaison team has trained a cohort of officers of the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force on riot control, using methods that would make Australia uncomfortable if they were used to quell civil unrest, particularly if Australian equipment were used in the process. In October, more RSIPF officers travelled to China for training.

It’s easy to see what Sogavare gets by playing Australia and China off against each other. He claims that the new vehicles and equipment—60 guns and 13 vehicles from Australia and two water cannon and 50 vehicles from China—are important for social and economic growth and for national sovereignty. But this is as much about protecting himself as it is the country—his own house was burned during the November 2021 Honiara riots, and his position as prime minister was jeopardised. Having lost faith in his security forces during the riots, he urgently wants to enhance their capabilities and have powerful friends to call on if civil disorder resumes.

Australia will have confronted some difficult questions before making this donation, which should be seen in the context of longstanding policy and not simply as a response to Chinese moves in the region. Rearmament of the RSIPF has been an ongoing collaboration with the Australian Federal Police since the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands ended in 2017. The historical basis for Australia working with the RSIPF doesn’t fully mitigate our concerns today, but Canberra would have done some due diligence. The Australian government would have been mindful of the misuse of police weapons and unprofessional police conduct during Solomon Islands’ ethnic tensions (1999–2004)—the reason most of the RSIPF is currently unarmed.

On balance, Australia’s donation to the RSIPF’s police response team was probably conducted as responsibly as it could have been. This group already holds weapons—albeit a lesser calibre than this most recent delivery—and have all been trained by Australia on how to use them. This matters, because Australian trainers combine technical skills with education on the appropriate, proportionate and lawful use of force, in line with international standards. While we can’t rely on the RSIPF to meet these standards all the time, we should be confident that officers trained by Australia will act with greater restraint than if China were training them in our stead.

Now the arms have been delivered, the pertinent question is what happens next. How do we sustain ongoing and healthy engagement with Solomon Islands in a way that truly supports its people, earns their trust and cements Australia as the security partner of choice?

Research conducted by ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre shows that many people in the Solomon Islands are concerned by the foreign donations to the country’s security services. In this case, their concerns are mainly about sustainability, misuse and government priorities, not whether the material comes from Australia or China.

Analysis of 264 Facebook comments on 12 posts sharing media content relating to the Chinese and Australian aid showed that Solomon Islanders hold three key concerns: how the equipment will be sustained, how the weapons might be used, and what the government’s priorities are. Of the comments, 117 had an identifiable issue with the aid delivered, while 56 were positive (Australia = 20, China = 15, Australia and China = 3 and Solomon Islands = 18), and 91 were neutral or unrelated. Thirty percent of comments with an identifiable issue raised concerns that vehicles wouldn’t be adequately fuelled or maintained, which would fail to improve the response capability of the RSIPF in the long term; 24% were concerned about police discipline and the use of weapons by police; and 19% called for greater investment in hospitals, medicine and road infrastructure, often in lieu of additional security equipment.

If Australia wants to improve its relationship with Pacific island countries, it needs greater awareness of the Pacific’s concerns—at the government and public levels. Canberra needs a positive working relationship with Honiara, whoever the government of the day may be, but also needs to address issues important to Solomon Islands citizens—something that China isn’t as adept at doing.

Sometimes, it’s a quick fix. Concerns about the amount of security aid in comparison to infrastructure and development aid is simply an issue of messaging. Australia has provided more than $2.6 billion in development aid to Solomon Islands since 2008. It is by far the largest contributing country in the Solomons and across the region. But many of these projects are ongoing and fade into distant memory in light of attention-grabbing security kit. Australia regularly provides Solomon Islands with fuel for previously gifted vessels through its long-running Pacific Maritime Security Program, demonstrating commitment to long-term usage and benefits.

Taking a moment to reiterate the effort and importance of Australia’s other aid during a handover ceremony or in an opinion piece in local media can remind Solomon Islanders of Australia’s long-term support for their country. Finding ways to share accessible infographics like Lowy’s Pacific aid map more widely might also help.

And for more controversial Australian assistance—such as the weapons recently provided—Canberra needs to make it clearer that it has thought about what it’s doing, and to explain how it will support the RSIPF and the Solomon Islands government to ensure the best possible outcomes for the country. In this instance, Australia should be demonstrating deep integration with the RSIPF—including ongoing training for professionalism and proper use of weapons and equipment and enhancing sovereign capabilities for maintenance and sustainment of equipment.

China’s security assistance to Solomon Islands is outside Australian control. But how Australia engages Solomon Islands with its security assistance determines our partnership. As a genuine partner seeking to enhance the capabilities and resilience of our Pacific neighbours, Australia needs to continue its security engagement with Solomon Islands with the full understanding that China will also provide assistance.

Regardless of Sogavare’s wish to enhance capabilities, Australia’s knowledge of and commitment to Solomon Islands’ requirements will avoid any appearance of Australia engaging for the wrong reasons. Australia won’t win by trying to provide the flashiest donations. But through ongoing support packages, engagement with police professionalism, and working with Solomon Islands to sustain equipment, Australia provides the value proposition that China can’t compete with.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers may talk about the tough times that Australia confronts, but the fine print of his budget papers reveals the extraordinary bounty which the global energy crisis is delivering to the federal budget and the Australian economy at large.

Since the budget handed down by the previous government in March, Treasury has upgraded its estimates of the revenue that the government will receive this year by an extraordinary $57.3 billion, thanks to unanticipated improvements in the economy. Most of this comes from higher company taxes generated by resource exports.

What makes this all the more remarkable is that in that last budget, only seven months ago, Treasury had already upgraded its estimates of revenue this year by $39.5 billion from the estimate it made four months previously in the budget update released in December last year.

That mid-year update had itself added $21.6 billion to the revenue forecast made in the May budget last year. And, you guessed it, last year’s budget had already upgraded its estimate of 2022–23 revenue by $19.4 billion.

These are all described in the budget papers as ‘parameter variations’ and reflect improvements in the economy—mostly higher commodity prices—rather than government decisions.

Adding it up, the cumulative improvement in budget revenue this year is a phenomenal $137.8 billion or about 22% since the end of 2020. True, this followed what proved to be unduly pessimistic forecasts for the impact of Covid-19 in 2020, but total revenue this year is still expected to be $68 billion or 12.6% ahead of what Treasury anticipated in December 2019, before the pandemic.

Not many countries enjoy this kind of bonanza, handed to them on a plate. For most countries, the prices they receive for their exports are much the same from one year to the next. The price of nearly everything is going up at the moment, but, in general, the prices of manufactured goods and services are not subject to big swings between boom and bust, as are commodities.

For most countries, improvements in the returns they get from their exports, relative to what they must pay for their imports, have to come from gains in productivity. Countries (and companies) can only achieve greater profits from their exports if they achieve greater efficiency. Improvements in productivity are hard won: gains of 1% or 2% a year are about as much as can be expected in a well-performing economy. Over the past five years, Australia’s productivity performance (using the broadest measure of productivity) has been a dismal 0.35% growth a year, but average export prices have more than doubled in this time.

The spiralling price of energy may be a crisis for households and manufacturers around the world, but it is a windfall for energy exporters. Among the handful of significant economies in this fortunate position are the United States, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Norway.

The breakdown of relations among this foursome is a large part of the reason why energy prices are soaring. Russia has unilaterally cut exports of gas to Europe, while the US and Europe, along with much of the advanced world, are imposing economic sanctions that affect Russia’s energy exports.

The US is trying to make the most of the shortfall in Russian supplies to the market by boosting its own shale-derived oil and gas exports. The US’s emergence as a net exporter of energy means it is a competitor of rather than a customer for Saudi Arabia, which is instead forging common cause with Russia. As for Norway—a founding NATO member—it is having to focus on the threat of sabotage to its energy infrastructure from its neighbour, Russia.

Australia sits gloriously remote from this miasma and has no geopolitical agenda. It is simply raking in the money. While China may order discriminatory bans on Australian commodities that are illegal under World Trade Organization rules, Australia has made no move to retaliate and is content to keep shipping as much liquefied natural gas, iron ore and any other commodities that China will accept as it can.

No other economy has had such a sustained run of good fortune as Australia. It has enabled governments to introduce the National Disability Insurance Scheme, increase aged care funding, boost the share of GDP spent on defence to 2% and cut taxes. There are inevitably calls for the government to spend yet more, but there is danger ahead.

The key economic measure is the ‘terms of trade’, which compares the price received for exports with the price paid for imports. It is measured as an index. A rising terms of trade adds to national income.

For most of Australia’s history, the index measure has hovered at around 60 points. There have been brief spikes to 70 or 80 points, during the nickel boom in the 1960s and through the commodity boom that accompanied the oil crisis in the early 1970s. There was a slump to around 50 points in 1986–87—when then-treasurer Paul Keating proclaimed that Australia would become a ‘banana republic’ unless it tackled its balance-of-payments deficit.

But starting in the early 2000s, the terms of trade started climbing to unprecedented heights, as Australia became the supplier of choice for the extraordinarily resource-intensive burst of growth in China. The terms of trade surpassed 100 points in 2008, as the resource boom peaked ahead of the global financial crisis, and then rose further to reach 120 points in 2011. It slipped back to 80 points by 2016, but has since zoomed back past 120 points, or around double the long-term average.

To get a sense of what that means in dollars, Australia’s exports in the past 12 months were $550 billion. If the terms of trade index went back to its long-term average, that would strip about $275 billion of annual income out of the economy. The federal budget would lose around $90 billion.

How likely is that? Treasury is in fact forecasting a big fall in Australia’s export commodity prices. By March next year, it assumes prices for a tonne of iron ore will drop from US$91 to US$55, for steel-making coal from US$271 to US$130, for thermal coal (for power stations) from a hard-to-believe current price of US$438 to US$60 and for LNG from US$934 to US$630.

The budget anticipates the terms of trade dropping back to around 95 points next year. That’s still about 50% higher than the long-term average. Treasury comments that the war in Ukraine may prolong the boom in energy prices while the downturn in China may depress iron ore prices.

Historically, the terms of trade has always reverted to somewhere around its long-term average of 60 points. Until the China boom came along in the early 2000s, it was often said that Australia’s terms of trade was destined for a long-term decline. As mining became more capital intensive, costs per tonne would fall and prices would follow. On the other hand, it was expected that an increasing share of income would be spent on ever more sophisticated and expensive manufactured goods and high-cost services.

The China boom turned that logic on its head—the world did not have enough resources readily available to meet China’s ravenous demand, so more marginal and higher cost resources had to be tapped, pushing resource prices higher across the board. China’s unrivalled scale, on the other hand, meant the cost of manufactured goods fell.

It’s too soon to say definitively that the China boom is over, but it looks entirely possible, as the property boom that fuelled its meteoric growth deflates. There’s a risk that Australia’s terms of trade will drop back towards its long-term average, with the prices of the commodities we export returning to their traditional relationship with the manufactured goods we import.

Geopolitics may keep energy prices higher for longer, but there would be a hangover and some very hard decisions if the Chinese punchbowl were whisked away.

Tensions have been rising in outer space in recent years, leading to a covert arms race and what some perceive as the brink of space warfare. Space-based technologies such as communications satellites are an integral part of people’s daily lives and are key strategic assets for military and intelligence operations.

The first Gulf War in the 1990s is often referred to as the first space war because of the asymmetric advantage that space-based navigation, targeting, communications and intelligence gave to the US-led coalition. Modern militaries depend as much on space as they do on cyber technologies. The best way to compromise an adversary’s eyes and ears is to target its space capabilities.

Space has become a contested strategic domain and if an armed conflict were to extend there, it would be catastrophic for millions of civilians because of the extent to which global civil services also depend on space.

The UN open-ended working group on reducing space threats held its second session in Geneva last week. The establishment of the working group followed decades of roadblocks on striving for space arms control. Its shift to articulating norms of responsible behaviour rather than trying to define what capabilities or weapons should be prohibited is a valuable and hopeful one. It may be easier for states to agree on bottom-line behaviours that are irresponsible, such as the deliberate creation of space debris, which poses threats to all space assets.

Last year, Russia destroyed one of its own satellites using a surface-launched anti-satellite missile, or ASAT. This wasn’t the first such incident; over the past several years, China, the US and India have each destroyed their own satellites in space. The Russian test was notable for creating thousands of pieces of debris, putting at risk Russian and other nations’ space-based assets as well as the Russian, American and German crew aboard the International Space Station.

Developing space norms may have obvious beneficial outcomes, yet many nations are still stuck in a ‘prisoner’s dilemma’ pursuing their own interests to the detriment of all, including themselves. The main thrust of the prisoner’s dilemma is that each party is unaware of and incapable of knowing what the other will do, creating an environment of mistrust that prevents cooperation and encourages self-interest, even if it leads to disadvantageous outcomes for all parties.

This has been at the heart of a security dilemma in space. Various governments’ establishment of military space branches, for example, has been justified by the threats posed by perceived malign actors, further raising the risk of more counterspace capabilities threatening the technologies we all depend on.

The prisoner’s dilemma could be countered by shifting the perspective towards a ‘stag hunt’. A hunter can hunt a hare by themselves without help, but hunting a stag is more lucrative. However, a successful stag hunt requires cooperation with another hunter. In our case, achieving agreed space norms represents the stag, requiring cooperation among all nations.

In April, timed to coincide with the UN working group’s first meeting, the US announced a unilateral commitment not to conduct destructive direct-ascent ASAT tests. On its own this was laudable, but more importantly it opened the door for others to follow suit. Canada and New Zealand joined the US with their own unilateral commitments. Last week, Japan and Germany announced similar commitments, highlighting that they don’t have and are not pursuing such capabilities in the hope of developing agreed space norms. And the US has announced that it will bring a draft resolution to the UN General Assembly calling on all states to make this commitment, a vote on which would resemble a real stag hunt.

Australia’s statement at last week’s working group meeting indicated strong support for this initiative, saying that ‘intentional, reckless or negligent generation of long-lived debris fields [is] a significant threat to the space domain’ and noting the importance of the US commitment not to test destructive direct-ascent ASATs. The Australian government’s commitments to addressing climate change, to ensuring regional stability and to increasing sovereign capabilities would all be served by joining this stag hunt to make space more stable, secure and sustainable. It now needs to move to the full commitment not to conduct such tests.

The countries that have made this commitment are key space partners for Australia. The Australian Defence Force’s newly established space command is in a similar position to the military space branches in these partner countries, and it must seek opportunities to shape the development of agreed space norms. Committing to a moratorium on destructive direct-ascent ASAT tests would expand the coalition working towards an agreed set of space norms. It would allow Australia to become a regional leader along with New Zealand and help reduce escalating tensions in space.

The US government has recently made a start on formalising the framework for responsible military norms in its space policy. Aggressive language has been removed from internal Pentagon documents to signal to allies, partners and adversaries that it is willing to cooperate to achieve agreed norms of behaviour in space. Space-faring nations need to remain vigilant about the language used in their space strategies and doctrines to support the stability of space as an operational domain.

To establish an agreed set of space norms, space-faring nations must view space like other complex social environments. Treating it as a prisoner’s dilemma will be detrimental to all. Australia has a big role to play, starting with collaborating with other states in agreeing to a moratorium on destructive direct-ascent ASAT tests. There are precedents for such an agreement, starting with the laws of armed conflict, which were developed incrementally over time.

Declaring a moratorium on destructive direct-ascent ASAT tests is another step along this long journey for the benefit of all, and is something Australia should express without hesitation, in the coming weeks or months, to be among the global leaders in shaping norms.

In January, the UK’s defence chief, Tony Radakin, warned that Russian submarine and underwater activities were directly threatening subsea cable systems. There’s speculation that Russia could cut cables if it further escalates the war in Ukraine.

In July, the former head of Mauritius Telecom accused the country’s prime minister of having bypassed processes to grant access to a ‘technical team’ from India to install a device that would monitor internet traffic at the landing station of the South Africa Far East submarine cable at Baie Jacotet in Mauritius.

Closer to home, the president of the Federated States of Micronesia, David Panuelo, wrote to his fellow Pacific island leaders in May about the regional risks of the China – Solomon Islands security agreement, pointing out that the ‘bulk of Chinese research activity in FSM has followed our nation’s fibre optic cable infrastructure’.

In a recent paper, we argue that a comprehensive approach is required to address the resilience of undersea communications cables. There are more than 430 subsea cables that may be targets for anyone wishing to disrupt global connectivity. These cables transfer more than 95% of international communications and data globally. They are core critical infrastructure and underpin the internet, financial markets and digital economies.

All it takes to damage a cable is a merchant ship or fishing boat dropping its anchor on a cable not far from the coast. In January, an underwater volcano shattered Tonga’s internet infrastructure—a single cable connecting the archipelago to the global internet. It took five weeks to fix. Fishing and anchoring incidents account for approximately 70% of cable faults globally. Divers, submersibles or military grade drones could place explosives on the cables or install mines nearby, which could then be detonated remotely. Cable repair ships could be attacked.

Several nations in the Indo-Pacific operate submarines capable of stealthily tampering with cables, although it’s technically challenging to do and there are easier ways to obtain data. But cable-laying companies can potentially insert backdoors or install surveillance equipment. By hacking into network-management systems, attackers could control multiple cable-management systems. Terrorists and criminal organisations could exploit cable vulnerabilities for different purposes.

But the bigger threat is cable interference at data points or landing stations. Sydney and Perth are the primary points where cables land in Australia. Power could be cut to those sites or explosive devices detonated. Missile attacks are possible. Landing station locations are vulnerable because data can be intercepted and ‘mirrored’ (that is, copied while the sender and receiver are none the wiser).

While US, French and Japanese corporations have dominated the subsea cable market for many years, Chinese firm HMN Tech (formerly Huawei Marine Networks) now has a global market share of about 10%. Recognising China’s hunger for data, in 2021 the World Bank–sponsored East Micronesia Cable tender was cancelled for fears HMN Tech would win. Last year a consortium of companies including Google and Facebook ditched the Hong Kong conduit of the Pacific Light Cable Network due to data integrity concerns. It was to be a super-fast direct fibre-optic link between the US east coast and Hong Kong.

When it comes to the Pacific, Australia and its partners should continue to fund and co-fund cable projects to fend off Chinese-backed alternatives. This includes monitoring HMN Tech proposals and tenders and seeking to encourage and facilitate alternative suppliers where possible. In May, a draft maritime cooperation agreement between China and Solomon Islands was leaked. China’s goal, it stated, is to develop ‘a maritime community with a shared future’ by building wharves, shipyards and submarine cables for Solomon Islands.

Australia is already a part owner of the Coral Sea Cable Company, which connects Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands to Australia. The Australian government also partnered in 2020 with Japan and the US to finance an undersea cable to Palau. More can be done together with these partners, as well as India, the UK and the EU, to fund and back new cables in the Pacific.

There’s no international treaty to protect against physical or cyberattacks on undersea cables, but at a national level Australia’s submarine cable protection regime is considered a regional gold standard. Australia’s Telecommunications Act 1997 declares ‘protection zones’ around cable routes, restricts potentially damaging activity, criminalises cable interference and requires permits to lay new cables. While each country’s geographic circumstances are different, promoting the adoption of similar legislation by Pacific island nations would better safeguard their vulnerable cables from accidental damage and breaks.

Australia can work with its Pacific partners to facilitate greater information sharing on threats to the undersea communications network and strengthen limited regional cable-repair capabilities. We should work with regional maritime agencies to integrate cable surveillance into national and regional maritime domain awareness systems and establish national registers for government and industry points of emergency contact on cable resilience. Should China ink more security deals with Pacific island nations, the battle to lay, operate and repair this critical infrastructure will intensify. We should prioritise cable diplomacy in the Pacific to safeguard this essential international public good.

The Australian government should also back the commitment made by the Northern Territory government to connect Australia to the trans-Pacific cable. Last year’s AUSMIN communiqué noted that both sides ‘welcomed the Northern Territory government’s commitment to connecting Australia to the trans-Pacific cable, which will enhance digital connectivity between Australia and the United States and support critical infrastructure in the Indo-Pacific’.

The mooted branch line to Darwin would cost around $100 million. It would be the only undersea cable connecting the US to Singapore with a national-security-rated capability that doesn’t transit the South China Sea. It’s a secure, low-latency, high-speed data link to the US and Asia. Building a connecting branch to Darwin would be a vital enabler for the Australian Defence Force, for national security more broadly and for digital access to Southeast Asia’s fast-growing market of 680 million people.

Despite the boom in undersea communications cables, Antarctica is the sole remaining continent without fibre-optic communications connectivity. But there’s now bold talk by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology of running a subsea data cable connecting the Mawson, Davis and Casey stations on the Antarctic continent, and the Macquarie Island research station, to Tasmania. Such a connection would pose challenges, mainly in the form of icebergs. But if it went ahead, it would provide unprecedented speed of communications and reliability and strengthen Australia’s position in our geopolitically contested southern flank.

And in the near future it won’t just be undersea communications cables and infrastructure that will require protection. As we push ahead on clean energy, we’ll see more undersea transnational electricity cable connections to solar farms and offshore wind farms, with significant environmental and energy security benefits. Infrastructure Australia recently provided its endorsement for the economic benefits of the Australia–Asia PowerLink project. Commencing in 2024, it would export solar power from the Northern Territory to Singapore via a 4,200-kilometre submarine cable from Darwin and provide up to 15% of Singapore’s power supply. The Indonesian government has already approved the cable route and granted a permit to conduct subsea surveys in Indonesian waters to map the underwater route to Singapore.