American technology company Google plans to build an artificial intelligence (AI) data center on Australia's Christmas Island. Reuters reported, citing sources, that the Australian Department of Defense considers this territory an important outpost to monitor the activities of Chinese submarines and surface fleets in the Indian Ocean.
“The data center is designed in part to allow you to provide the artificial intelligence command and control capabilities that you will need in the future, especially if you rely on unmanned systems for surveillance, targeting and even combat missions,” Brian Clark, a former US Navy spokesman, told Reuters.
In his view, the presence of a forward command and control center on Christmas Island “would be very important” in the event of a hypothetical conflict with a potential enemy, which Clark identified as China.
As noted in the publication, during a recent exercise involving the Australian, US and Japanese militaries, the important role of Christmas Island was noted as “Australia's first line of defense in any regional conflict”. The role of the territory as a convenient point for launching drones has been emphasized separately.
Reuters reports that plans to build a large data center on Christmas Island come after Google and the Australian Department of Defense signed a cloud services cooperation agreement. Details of the project are kept secret – neither the cost nor the exact scale of construction is known. As local government representatives told the agency, Google is in negotiations to lease land for a future center near Christmas Island airport. They also claim that Google is in talks with a local mining company to power the future center.
In October, Google applied to build an undersea cable between Christmas Island and the northern Australian city of Darwin, where the US Marine Corps is stationed six months of the year. Cable installation was entrusted to the American company SubCom, which previously worked for the US and British Navy. Clark notes that submarine cables provide significantly more communications capacity and reliability than satellite systems. As the expert explains, during a crisis, satellite communications are unreliable, unlike underwater communications.
Previously, the press service of US defense corporation Lockheed Martin reported that the company intends to deploy Google's general artificial intelligence tools into its internal AI Factory system.
