AUKUS ‘could flop over US tech export controls’

One of the most senior Democrats in congress warns the security pact could flop if the US doesn’t share top secret military technology with Australia.

A US nuclear submarine takes part in military exercises. Picture: AFP

One of the most senior Democrats in congress overseeing the US armed services has warned that the AUKUS security pact could flop if the US does not share top secret military technology with Australia and other nations.

Adam Smith, the ranking member on the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, told a seminar in Washington on Wednesday (Thursday AEDT) that his country’s excessive focus on “technology export controls” could scuttle the three-way security pact between the US, UK and Australia.

“AUKUS is great idea with a lot of promise, but it could also go bloop,” he said, making a downward hand gesture at the same time.

“If we overemphasise making sure we have these export restrictions, we hamper our ability to build the relationship we need to build,” he added, explaining how legislative and regulatory prohibitions on the export of US military technology was “one of the big problems right now with Australia and other countries”.

Mr Smith was speaking amid a period of heightened concern about the ability of the US to supply Australia with nuclear-submarines, one of the promises of AUKUS, owing to capacity constraints at US submarine yards, fears prompted by a leaked letter from December from two senior senators to President Joe Biden.

Eight Democrat and Republican congressman, including Mr Smith, have since dismissed the arguments in the senators’ letter, penning their own public statement earlier this week that the US could satisfy its own submarine manufacturing requirements and those of Australia.

“Far from a zero-sum game, the potential for the United States to provide or build new submarines under AUKUS … could very well be a ‘rising tide that lifts all boats’,” they wrote.

The AUKUS security pact, which emerged in September 2021 after secret negotiations among the then Morrison government with the US and UK governments, also promised greater sharing of advanced technology to integrate the military industrial bases of the three nations.

At AUSMIN bilateral meetings conducted in Washington in December Defence Minister Richard Marles and Foreign Minister Penny Wong weren’t able to extract concrete promises from their US counterparts to pare back rules that prohibit US technology export, disappointing observers.

“We place too much emphasis on trying not to share … this notion that we can only have leadership as long as we hold on and make sure nobody ever sees it,” Mr Smith said at a Brookings Institution defence seminar, which was, separately, crashed by two protesters demanding Democrats’ seek a negotiated settlement with Russia in Ukraine to avoid nuclear war.

US Ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy told The Australian last month the US was aware of the problem and working to reform the rules in question, following a letter a few days earlier from four of her predecessors.

“AUKUS cannot achieve its ambitious goals of sharing and co-developing critical and emerging technologies, from nuclear submarines to hypersonic missiles and autonomous systems, without revising the International Trade and Arms Regulations,” they wrote, referring to the problem regulations in question.

Taken together, the congressmen’s comments suggest some disagreement or at least inertia at the higher levels of the US defence establishment in relation sharing sensitive technology.

The government has promised to release early this year along with its major defence review details on how and where the eight nuclear-powered submarines promised under the agreement will be built.

Mr Smith also berated China for launching a trade war after Canberra requested greater transparency in relation to the origin of Covid-19, which originated in Wuhan, China.

“I think China could have figured out a lot of this stuff on their own,” he added, playing down concerns too much sharing would risk Beijing stealing technology.