Australia’s path to a sovereign, high-impact defence technology ecosystem will not start with quantum supremacy. It will start with deployable, verifiable systems that meet today’s threats.
Against the backdrop of strategic contest in the Indo-Pacific, Australia’s defence innovation effort remains skewed toward long-horizon bets such as quantum computing, hypersonics and artificial intelligence. These technologies are important, but they offer more distant promise than near-term operational effect. With a near-exclusive focus on the perfect, Australia risks overlooking what is good enough now.
This is not a new dilemma. In the mid-20th century, the United States turned Santa Clara Valley into a global technology hub not through speculation but by meeting near-term military needs. What we now call Silicon Valley emerged from Cold War urgency, state-backed procurement and investment in deployable systems—such as transistors, radar and integrated circuits.
As Margaret O’Mara details in The Code, and as further explored by Stanford’s SystemX Alliance, the US Department of Defense was not just a backer of innovation; it was the lead customer. National-security needs drove delivery. Commercial outcomes followed. That model of mission-driven innovation is one Australia should examine closely, particularly as AUKUS Pillar Two risks becoming an exercise in aspirational bureaucracy rather than capability delivery. In an article in War on the Rocks this month, Peter Dean and Alice Nason argue that the Pillar Two is ‘failing in its mission’ and urgently needs a more operationally focused pathway.
This raises a broader question. Why do countries with a fraction of Australia’s population consistently produce defence-relevant technology firms while we continue to struggle to move capability from concept to field? An example is Israeli cybersecurity company Wiz, acquired by Google earlier this year. The issue is not just scale or geography. It lies in how ecosystems are structured, incentivised and connected to national objectives.
Australia is at an inflection point. The region demands deployable defence capabilities within the next one to two years. Secure communications, trusted computing power, resilient supply chains and self-reliant manufacturing are urgent operational requirements. Yet Australia lacks many of these capabilities at scale, has limited capacity to produce truly trusted products domestically and remains dependent on many foreign vendors for key components. That leaves our systems exposed and our operational sovereignty in question.
The government should not walk away from high-end research, but it should rebalance its posture to back technologies that are ready, or near ready, and meet real operational gaps. These include secure mesh networking, edge computing devices and mission-ready hardware. These systems exist today. What they lack is procurement support and speed to fielding.
Some Australian firms are already working in these areas. However, they face long funding delays, fragmented procurement processes and complex pathways through layers of prime contractors. The result is capability that arrives too late or not at all.
The government’s Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator (ASCA) was created to close this gap. Its intent is sound. But recent commentary suggests it remains too focused on distant programs, despite not yet having the industrial base to support them. As Meta’s chief technology officer recently observed, even Silicon Valley is rediscovering its national security roots. Australia should do the same before a crisis forces the issue.
The appointment of Major General Hugh Meggitt to lead ASCA could mark a shift. The government should use this moment to refocus ASCA on solving near-term capability challenges, supporting solutions that already exist and partnering more directly with the sovereign industrial base. That means moving from abstract innovation management to practical delivery, underpinned by trusted prototyping and secure manufacturing.
Australia’s broader industrial strategy also needs adjusting. Reconstruction efforts should prioritise dual-use electronics, embedded systems and the mundane components—including circuit boards, firmware and connectors—that enable trusted capability. Without these, even the most advanced systems might be compromised before they are powered on.
The skills are here. So is the ambition. What is missing is a clearly prioritised delivery strategy. If we want to build a Silicon Valley of our own, it should not begin with hype. It should begin with what the Indo-Pacific demands right now.