In 2011, venture capitalist and dot.com pioneer Marc Andreessen famously declared that ‘software is eating the world’. His argument was that services that had once been delivered via traditional means were rapidly being displaced by new software-enabled firms, like Amazon, Netflix and Spotify.

Andreessen took issue with market pessimists who looked at the rapid growth of second-generation tech companies like Facebook and who wrongly predicted another financial bubble was forming.

Instead, he argued, business was in the midst of ‘a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy’.

More than a decade on, a shift no less profound is underway. Like with the software boom of the early 2000s, the rapid uptake of cloud computing services is transforming the digital ecosystem.

By some estimates, global spending on cloud services will reach nearly US$600 billion in 2023, and that is set to increase annually.

Companies are increasingly migrating their services to cloud operators, attracted by cheap operating costs, infinite scalability and on-demand computing power. But whereas the software boom transformed the digital economy, upending business models and giving rise to the tech titans of today, the cloud services revolution is reaching beyond the digital horizon and deep into our lives.

The Covid-19 pandemic gave us a glimpse of this.

Employees who once would have had no choice but to come to work, stayed at home—juggling schooling with Zoom calls. Businesses shed office space and expensive in-house ICT capabilities in favour of laptops and off-the-shelf professional services. And an increasing array of services, from food delivery to data storage to e-government, was presented to us, safely, efficiently and cheaply online.

The benefits of this new phase of digital growth have been profound, but also profoundly uneven. Too much of the world lacks the digital infrastructure required to make full use of these opportunities.

In the Pacific, this digital shortage is particularly acute.

The tyranny of distance and lack of market size mean Pacific nations must for the most part rely on Australia and New Zealand to host their data and provide digital capability.

Ironically, that distance and small, dispersed populations make access to cloud services especially important. Robust cloud infrastructure gives developing economies an asymmetrical advantage, allowing them to compete in the digital marketplace with larger, more advanced economies.

But when those nations lack robust infrastructure, the implications can be profound, as when Tonga’s massive volcanic eruption in January 2022 cut the internet for days. The humanitarian impacts aside, the disaster forced Tonga to relinquish control over its sovereign information.

In the Pacific, round trips to core infrastructure in Australia or New Zealand can exceed 500 milliseconds, compared with latency as low as 150 milliseconds between Sydney and the West Coast of the United States. High latency makes it impossible to build a mature and independent digital ecosystem. The result is a rudimentary digital capability, prone to disruption and inimical to growth.

For businesses, this is stultifying.

A decade ago, Andreessen reasoned that the software boom of the mid-2000s was driven by the growth of smartphones and the mass rollout of broadband internet. It relied on the existence of a vast digital infrastructure, which in turn fuelled a new wave of tech-based entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurship in the modern age will require a new bedrock of digital infrastructure.

In a 2021 working paper, the Asian Development Bank wrote that cloud computing was emerging as the foundational infrastructure for building nimble, highly scalable and digitally enabled firms.

The bank wrote: ‘It is imperative for governments to consider the availability of baseline infrastructure and foundational elements for a digital economy, which enable the emergence of agile, resilient, and competitive tech start-ups, powered by cloud computing.’

Ubiquitous access to the cloud is vital if this digital divide is to be closed. If it is not, disparity and inequality will only grow.

In the absence of jobs and opportunity, the Pacific’s best and brightest will not stay. And foreign businesses will not invest if the digital infrastructure remains fragile and prone to disruption.

Developing economies like India and the Philippines successfully leveraged the benefits of cloud platforms, attracting millions in multinational investment and allowing them to grow their service sectors.

The island states of the Pacific must do the same.

There are no easy solutions. Major cloud service providers like Amazon and Microsoft see a business case for building data centres in the Pacific. They recently built a US$5 billion data centre in New Zealand following, in part, the growth of accounting software Xero.

Pacific island states will be forced to embrace other solutions, like public–private cloud models that serve the region as a whole—thereby providing the necessary scale to be viable—while ensuring sovereign data remains onshore.

At a time when the Australian government is looking to redouble its diplomatic efforts in the Pacific, the provision of this digital infrastructure is an obvious way to make a big impact quickly. A failure to invest in this critical capability will have long-reaching social and economic consequences.

It could also have strategic implications.

If Australia and its allies do not help the Pacific island states make this digital transformation, other, less scrupulous operators will move quickly to fill the void.

The concept of recruiting Pacific islanders into the Australian military is neither a new nor a good idea. And yet in the past few weeks it has seen commentators in the media, in think tanks and even a politician singing its praises.

The first criticism of this particular thought bubble is that it does away with the long-held norm in Australia that there is a nexus between citizenship and military service. Members of the Australian Defence Force should be drawn from the body politic and be reflective of the same. Of course, there have been exceptions in the past when citizenship can be fast-tracked for technical specialists or to plug particular gaps through service transfers where fully trained members of like-minded militaries (often the UK) become ADF members.

It is also interesting that while some people advocate that Australia recruit Pacific islanders to protect the country through service in the ADF, there doesn’t appear to be any such advocacy to recruit Pacific islanders to protect the community through service in police forces. Western Australia wants recruits from the UK and Ireland, South Australia used to want bobbies and Victoria is keen to recognise prior service of only UK and New Zealand police officers. It seems anomalous that Pacific islanders are somehow deemed suitable to plug gaps in the military and yet not deemed suitable to plug gaps in the various police forces.

The most important concern over the practicality of the issue is the lack of discussion about exactly what type of personnel the future ADF requires and precisely why the Pacific islands are likely to have them. There is no doubt that the future growth pattern for the ADF is ambitious. But the exact nature of that future growth path is not yet known, although there is no doubt that it will require higher rather than lower skilled personnel. This article sheds some light on what might be required in the years ahead—a more than doubling of the submarine force to introduce our nuclear submarine fleet, additional cyber and information warfare personnel and the further growth of space command.

Yet even though we are likely to require nuclear submariners and cyber and information warfare personnel in the years to come, proponents of the Pacific island recruitment strategy appear fixated on infantry battalions. Hence, we find an author assuring us: ‘If Australia wanted to recruit Fijians into the ADF tomorrow, it would have no problem raising a battalion in one day.’

The fact that Fijians serve in the British military is also used as an argument as to why they could serve in the ADF. Yet it is really only the British Army that does this. In all, 93% of Fijian-born UK military personnel were in the army, according to 2019 figures. They served mainly in line infantry and supporting arms units. Over 70% of the more than 640 Fijians recruited into the British Army in 2020 filled vacancies in infantry and artillery units—again, not the areas where the ADF is short of manpower now, or where it’s likely to be in the future.

The idea of a Pacific island regiment, whose role, composition and command status is never particularly defined, has also been given a run in a 2021 inquiry into Australia’s defence relationships with Pacific island nations and was resurrected in the most recent calls for a Pacific islands recruitment plan.

And there is also the issue about whether personnel shortfalls in the ADF are more about the inability to recruit individuals, or the inability to retain them. The government has already signalled its willingness to address the retention issue with its announcement of bonuses for those who continue to serve after their initial commitment expires. There is nothing to say that Pacific islander recruits’ retention rates would be any better, particularly if they had their citizenship fast-tracked and were free to enter the Australian labour market after their initial commitment expired.

In addition to traducing a long-held practice in which citizenship should be tied to military service by advocating that Australia recruit Pacific islanders to fill vacancies that we don’t know exist or whether they are suitable to fill them, there also appears to be a little bit of selective labour market Magic Pudding about this proposal—as though the Pacific islands are an inexhaustible well of workers that we can just draw from when we need.

Need some aged-care workers? Pacific islanders can do the trick. Agricultural workers? Ditto. And while nobody argues that the flow of remittances is not good for Pacific island economies, there are potentially negative consequences too. The rush to recruit healthcare workers to Australia, for example, can leave the donor country short of the very skills it exports.

This idea of recruiting Pacific islanders into the ADF has appeal at a very superficial level. But even the shallowest of analyses of the concept reveals how flawed the idea is, starting with the fact that nobody has articulated the problem that their solution is designed to fix, let alone how a Pacific islands recruitment strategy can actually fix it.

The Albanese government is advancing Australia’s Pacific interests by supporting island nations’ efforts to deal with marine plastics pollution. The amount of plastic waste in the oceans is projected to approximately double by 2030 and even triple by 2040. Plastics have now reached the deepest parts of the oceans and are being ingested by the animals that live there. An ocean scientist observed: ’the junk on the ocean’s surface has a one-way ticket to the deep sea—where it will remain.’

At the UN Ocean Conference in Lisbon in June, Environment and Water Minister Tanya Plibersek said she’d like to see a plastic-free Pacific in her lifetime. She promised $16 million to help update Pacific laws to ban single-use plastics and for public information campaigns to encourage people to use less plastic and develop alternatives to single-use plastics. Plibersek promised support to strengthen waste management in the region. She also noted that Australians were eating a credit card-sized volume of microplastics every week, according to one report.

Plastics pollution is taking its toll on the health of Pacific communities, degrading natural ecosystems and threatening their food security. And it’s not just an eyesore. Marine plastics contribute to climate change through direct gas emissions and indirectly by negatively affecting ocean organisms.

Things are, however, moving quickly at a global level to deal with plastic marine debris. The UN Environment Assembly agreed in March to a resolution to ‘End plastic pollution: towards an international legally binding instrument’ and the formation of an intergovernmental negotiating committee to negotiate a new binding global agreement covering the whole life cycle of plastics. The committee first meets in November in Uruguay.

This activity at the international level is very much in line with last September’s Pacific regional declaration on the prevention of marine litter and plastic pollution and its impacts, where Pacific leaders expressed grave concern about the environmental, social, cultural, economic, human rights, human health and food-security impacts of plastics pollution.

It’s also in line with two other significant ocean policy developments. At the July Pacific Islands Forum meeting in Suva, leaders adopted the ambitious 2050 strategy for the blue Pacific continent. One of the strategy’s seven key themes, ‘ocean and environment’, commits to protecting the ocean and its resources from pollution. The strategy is the forum’s aspirational agenda for the next three decades.

At the UN Ocean Conference, where Pacific leaders urged the international community to combat plastic pollution, world leaders adopted a political declaration, Our ocean, our future, our responsibility. Among other goals, the declaration stressed the value of preventing, reducing and eliminating marine plastic litter, including single-use plastics and microplastics. It noted the devastating impacts the Covid‑19 pandemic has had on small island states through increased amounts of plastic medical waste.

The Pacific islands contribute less than 1.3% of the mismanaged plastics in the world’s oceans but they’re one of the main recipients of marine plastics. Most have inadequate or under-resourced waste management infrastructure. Recycling is constrained by intra- and inter-island logistical and transport challenges, lack of collection and sorting facilities, limited port capacity and difficulty in securing and retaining markets for post-consumer materials. Many islands have limited landfill space and high shipping costs. Reliable waste collection services are primarily available to communities living only in the capital cities, not outer islands. Another challenge in recent years has been the increased frequency of cyclones and subsequent clean-ups impacting on local landfills. Many sites have been unable to cope with the sheer volume of waste.

But many measures are working well, such as the comprehensive regional framework for sustainable waste management and pollution prevention, Cleaner Pacific 2025.  The Pacific Ocean Litter Projectis a six-year regional program (2019–2025) to reduce single-use plastics from land-based sources and strengthen policy and legislative frameworks including the implementation of bans and levies.

Most of the ‘low hanging fruit’ of product bans has already been picked in the region. It’s impressive that around 70% of Pacific island states have policies banning single-use plastics and polystyrene, and more island countries are declaring commitments to do so. The total pledge will soon reach over 90% of states and territories.

A useful regional initiative is the Moana Taka Partnership with Swire Shipping Company providing free freight for non-commercial waste from Pacific islands to any destination within its Asia–Pacific network. Swire vessels use empty shipping containers to take away non-commercial recyclable waste.

Good work is also being undertaken by the Forum Fisheries Agency and the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission to stop the dumping by fishing vessel crews of plastic waste at sea.

The intergovernmental committee aims to complete its work to produce a plastics treaty by 2024. It’s got a broad mandate to develop both binding and voluntary measures, set global targets and produce mechanisms for tracking progress and ensuring accountability. The measures could include limits on the production of plastic, the phasing out of single-use products and requirements to recycle.

Pacific island countries have been actively calling for a global plastics treaty and are now preparing to participate at the intergovernmental committee’s meetings. They’ll play a strong role in ensuring any agreement is responsive to the needs of the region and its measures are effectively implemented. This week the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP), with funding support from Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, will hold a Pacific regional preparatory workshop in Suva on the committee’s role. Member countries will examine the barriers and the needs of the island countries in areas such as technology transfer, capacity building and finance. The committee aims, in just five meetings, to produce a global treaty to solve the ‘wicked’ problem of marine plastics.

The island nations have demonstrated real coherence on the marine debris issue and lessons can be shared with the countries of the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia. These can range from best practices in reducing or eliminating waste, effective monitoring, education and community programs, and technology around repurposing, recycling and reuse of plastic waste.

Before and after the committee’s first meeting later this year there should be greater dialogue involving the Pacific Islands Forum, SPREP, the Indian Ocean Rim Association and ASEAN on plastics pollution.

This could be along the lines of the workshop on plastic debris organised by Australia, India and Singapore in February and last month’s Indo-Pacific oceans initiative webinar on marine litter co-hosted by the Australia’s CSIRO, India’s National Centre for Coastal Research and Indonesia’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Research and Technology. Its goal? To prevent littering from space down to the deepest seas.

At the 2017 Munich Security Conference, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov announced the end of the post–Cold War world and Russia’s aim to build a ‘post-West’ world order. That caused a huge outcry, mostly among Western governments. The fact that Russia had indirectly mentioned the idea before went almost unnoticed.

In his speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue on 5 June 2016, Anatoly Antonov, former Russian deputy minister of defence and most likely the next ambassador to the US, highlighted Russia’s interest in the Asia–Pacific. He said Russia was looking for partners in the region to create ‘an equal and indivisible security environment’ serving everyone, and that it wanted to ‘enhanc[e] [its] military ties with the Asia–Pacific countries in order to strengthen peace and stability’.

The link? Simple: following the cooling of Russia’s relations with the US and Europe, and the fading of mutual expectations of prosperous cooperation after the end of the Cold War, Russia has to look—and is looking—for alternatives. That became evident in 2015 when the presidents of China and India, not European or American leaders, sat next to President Vladimir Putin during the victory parade in Moscow commemorating the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II. Western leaders had boycotted the event because of the annexation of Crimea and Russia’s involvement in the conflict in Eastern Ukraine. Meanwhile, Putin’s choice of guests presented a hint at Russia’s future priorities.

The fact that Russia—a European and Asian power—is exploring cooperation options in the Asia–Pacific region isn’t surprising. Both the US and Russia have shown an increasing interest in the region since the mid-2000s. America’s ‘pivot’ to Asia was mainly motivated by China’s rising influence. Russia also initially worked only on its ‘strategic partnership’ with China, which grew to become its main trading partner. Recently, however, international security issues, as well as domestic pressure, have compelled the Kremlin to look east: the region’s economic growth and rapid development have enhanced its global significance.

Three factors are spurring Russia to take a lead role rather than remain an extra in the theatre of the Pacific: the increased demand for natural resources and energy from the region’s growing population; emerging investment possibilities; and increasing military budgets—all of which are creating both new markets and security demands. The security challenges, especially, open up new opportunities, if not needs, for Russia to be more active. North Korea is the main source of instability in the region, and its growing capabilities also affect regional powers beyond China, South Korea and Russia—namely, Japan and Australia.

Moscow and Beijing have been the Kim regime’s main allies, focusing on deterrence against American unilateral actions, and expanding economic relations with Pyongyang. Russia has a vital interest in preventing escalation on the Korean peninsula, and vehemently criticised the regime’s missile launches. But Russia sees an end to US – South Korean manoeuvres as a prerequisite to putting increased pressure on North Korea to halt its nuclear and missile development program.

Russia also has an increasing interest in relations with South Korea. The trade potential stemming from the growing demand for natural resources and energy in South Korea also plays into Russia’s motivation for enhancing military ties and developing a regional security framework. Both would accompany intensifying investments and economic progress. One example of Russia’s interest in the peninsula is infrastructure modernisation in North Korea to facilitate trade with South Korea, which would also benefit Russia’s east.

International analysts often overlook pressures on Russia from its internal circumstances. The country’s east is underdeveloped and is experiencing a rural exodus. Investing in infrastructure both at home and abroad could help Russia overcome its trade deficits and improve national development.

To further its goal of being as strong a power as China in the Asia–Pacific, Russia has become more involved in regional associations (such as APEC and the ASEAN Regional Forum). After almost three decades of working towards (and not achieving) power parity with the West in the Euro-Atlantic sphere, Moscow now doesn’t want to miss any opportunities. So the Kremlin will expand its ‘strategic partnerships’ and increase engagement in conflict resolution, as demonstrated in Syria (though the quality of its engagement is certainly questionable). North Korea is potentially next. In addition, the entire Asia–Pacific is, like the rest of the world, facing increasing challenges such as terrorism, extremism, proliferation and trafficking. Cooperation among regional powers is necessary, and needs to involve Russia.

But why is any of this of importance to Australia? Until 2014, trade relations were growing between the two countries, with Australia supplying uranium to Russia for its (peaceful) nuclear energy program. After the annexation of Crimea, Australia imposed sanctions and travel bans on Russia and suspended uranium exports. Russia reacted by banning Australian agricultural products, which mainly affected butter. The downing of flight MH17, which left 38 Australians dead, further iced up the atmosphere between Canberra and Moscow.

Since then, Australia has focused even more on China, which has grown to become Australia’s main trading partner. However, that shouldn’t imply that a focus on Russia is obsolete. For now, Russia seems far away, but its increasing involvement in the Asia–Pacific could eventually cause a regional power struggle. Despite Russia’s current unstable economic situation, the potential expansion of its influence shouldn’t be underestimated, particularly with regard to trade interests in Southeast Asia and the Pacific nations (all potential Russian arms importers). Australia would be wise to prepare.

Leaders and officials of 14 Pacific Island countries will convene in Jaipur today for the 2nd Forum for India–Pacific Islands Cooperation. The first was held last year in Fiji, in conjunction with the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi after the G20 summit in Brisbane. Modi’s government sees increased engagement with the island countries of the Pacific as part of a wider agenda designed to enhance India’s global profile.

It’s too simplistic to depict this as simply an attempt to counter the influence of China in the region, although that’s almost certainly part of the reasoning behind it. In addition, it’s part of India’s ‘Look East’ policy and an aspect of India seeking to establish its global presence.

India has increased its presence in the region in recent times, and forums such as these indicate that we can expect that to continue. Unsurprisingly, India’s strongest bilateral relationship within the region is with Fiji but it’s reasonable to expect that this will provide a platform for increased engagement with other Pacific Island countries as well as regional organisations. The agenda for the Jaipur summit indicates that this engagement will be based around trade, development partnerships, people to people links and mutual support for issues of global diplomacy.

In 2012, trade between India and the Pacific islands region amounted to US$228 million and the Indian government is looking for further growth. It’s somewhat surprising that the Indian financial sector isn’t more active in Papua New Guinea, given the growing demand for credit there. Whilst in India, Pacific leaders will visit one of the world’s most famous tourist destinations, the Taj Mahal, and we would expect that increasing the number of Indian tourists visiting the Pacific Islands region will also be an issue for discussion.

India currently provides US$200,000 of development assistance to the each of the countries participating in the summit and is keen to promote the south–south nature of this engagement. New Delhi has experience of addressing key development challenges that affect the countries of the Pacific Island region that she can share, including combating gender-based violence, improving service delivery to rural and remote areas and disaster preparedness and recovery.

There are a number of significant diplomatic issues that will inform both formal and informal interactions at this summit. India is seeking a seat on the UN Security Council and appears to have secured 11 votes from among the Pacific Island countries. And the Indian government will no doubt be using this meeting to lobby for further support in this endeavour.

We can also expect the leaders of the Pacific Island region to use this opportunity to seek Indian support for their position in relation to climate change action ahead of the Paris talks later this year. Not only does India have a powerful voice in its own right, but the leaders of the Pacific should be exhorting it to exercise influence within the BRICS grouping. Related to this, but possibly more problematic from a diplomatic standpoint is the extent to which Kiribati President Anote Tong’s call for a moratorium on new coal mines can be meaningfully discussed with the Indian leadership, including their minister for coal.

Of no little significance is the influence that India, as the world’s largest democracy, can bring to bear in the realm of supporting Pacific Island countries in maintaining their commitment to democratic principles and the rule of law. There are numerous instances of governments in the region adopting positions and policies that have autocratic tendencies and there are particular concerns around the state of democracy and the rule of law in Nauru. Indian politics since 1947 have proved complex, messy and, in some instances, dangerous but overall a commitment to democratic governance has prevailed and this is an opportunity for the Delhi leadership to reinforce the importance of democracy for our region.

The Jaipur summit also provides Pacific leaders with an opportunity to discuss a number of issues among themselves, with a view to what they want to see as a result of next month’s Forum leaders’ meeting in Port Moresby.

Fiji’s prime minister may try to enlist support from other leaders for his suggestion that the membership of the Pacific Islands Forum be changed to exclude Australia and New Zealand, although this has failed to get much traction thus far. Similarly, leaders may use this opportunity to seek to persuade PM Bainimarama to cement his country’s post-election rehabilitation by joining them in PNG in September. They could also discuss the initiatives that they can expect to have put to them following the process envisaged by the Framework for Pacific Regionalism.

Of these, the one that is most politically and diplomatically sensitive is the issue of West Papua. The United Liberation Movement for West Papua has already commenced lobbying for leaders to instigate a fact-finding mission to the Papuan provinces.

Meetings such as these provide important opportunities for Pacific leaders to further national and regional diplomatic initiatives and they need to be utilised strategically and effectively.