01 September 2026
Questions to be answered on AUKUS Pillar II
Digital Rights Watch has today called on the federal government to explain the extent to which Australians’ privacy, safety and security will be impacted by the AUKUS Treaty.
In a submission to the Public Inquiry into AUKUS which is holding hearings in Canberra Wednesday and Thursday, Digital Rights Watch called for great scrutiny of the impact of so-called ‘Pillar II’ on the way Australian data could be used in the development of military technology.
While there has been due focus on AUKUS Pillar I, the military hardware, less public attention has been placed on the way the agreement will lock Australia into US technology or what that means to our national sovereignty.
The submission lay out a series of questions about that Australians deserve answers to. These include:
- Does Pillar II expand existing intelligence-sharing alliances beyond their original scope into shared military AI and autonomous weapons systems? If so, what Australian oversight will be available?
- Will Australians be informed if their personal information or civic data sets (collated by governments) are used to train military AI models?
- What role will private US military contractors play in the management of shared technology?
- Will contracts between private US military contractors and Australian government departments provide specific protections or limitations against data-sharing with other governments?
- Will Australia retain the capacity to direct or limit how this information is used? For example, where technology from private US military contractors is being used in conflicts that are in breach of our international legal obligations in locations like Gaza?
- Where the Australian government does work with companies connected to US military (e.g. OpenAI, Anthropic), how will the right to exit the relationship be written into the contract?
Digital Rights Watch Chair Lizzie O’Shea will be Presenting to the committee at 11am Wednesday at the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture (ACCC), 15 Blackall St, Barton ACT