Over the last eight years, during the first Trump and then the Biden administrations, the United States has, through close cooperation with allies and partners in the research, development, commercialization, and deployment of artificial intelligence, cyber, space, quantum information and other critical and emerging technologies (CET), attempted to strengthen deterrence in the Indo-Pacific by raising doubt in Beijing’s mind that it could maintain parity in defense technologies essential to taking Taiwan or another regional scenario.
The goals of this cooperation, which have been pursued through minilateral groupings such as AUKUS Pillar II, the Trilateral Strategic Dialogue, and the Quad as well as bilateral discussions such as the U.S.-India COMPACT (Catalyzing Opportunities for Military Partnership, Accelerated Commerce & Technology), are at least threefold: to speed the adoption of new technologies for defense uses by the United States and friendly militaries; foster the interoperability of and information sharing about CET systems among partners; and more tightly link defense industry and innovation bases across partners. AI, quantum, autonomy, and other CET will speed up decision-making and as well as generate “precise mass” across the Indo-Pacific.
During the second Trump administration, the challenges to making progress in building a robust technology deterrence will be both structural and political. Policymakers in Washington, Delhi, Canberra, Tokyo, and Seoul will continue to work to harmonize export control laws, security, and classification standards. The impact on the regional integration process of uncertainty about the durability of U.S. commitments to allies and the pursuit of “America First” technology strategy are, however, likely to be more disruptive. Outcomes at either end of the spectrum—a high-level of regional cooperation and integration or regional actors pursuing high degrees of technological independence and partnerships without the United States—are possible, but the most likely outcome is an uneven mix of cooperation with partners across technologies.
Building Technological Deterrence
As many have noted, it is the private sector that is driving innovation in the technologies that are essential to modern military capabilities and deterrence. While the federal government funded the research and development of stealth, GPS, and other technologies that dominated the Cold War, today private companies are in the driver’s seat. Of the fourteen technology sectors identified as critical by the Defense Department to maintain national security, the private sector leads in eleven of them. This means that any efforts to create an Indo-Pacific defense technology base needs to do two things at once. First, within national economies, decision-makers need to develop policies, institutions, and funding mechanisms that speed the adaptation of commercial technologies to defense uses. In the United States, for example, the Pentagon has streamlined procurement and developed new relationships with the private sector through organizations like In-Q-Tel and the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU). The Australian government has introduced Defense Trailblazer, an initiative that encourages greater collaboration among research communities, the defense industry, and the Australian Department of Defense.
Second, the United States and its regional partners need to weave together technology ecosystems with diverse actors and distinct capabilities. The purpose of AUKUS Pillar II is to enhance interoperability in cyber capabilities, artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, undersea, hypersonics, electronic warfare, and other CET. AUKUS partners have conducted several artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomy demonstrations, and in 2024 launched AUKUS Innovation Challenges, the first of which focused on electronic warfare with companies from across all three innovation ecosystems competing for prizes. The QUAD has so far resulted in few concrete collaborations, but the Quad Investor Network brings investors, corporations, and public institutions across India, Japan, Australia, and the United States together to accelerate investment in CET. India, South Korea, and the United Sates announced plans to deepen technological cooperation, and, as part of the United States-India Compact, U.S. and Indian leaders announced an initiative to catalyze collaboration among government, academia, and private sector to promote application of CET in areas like defense and intelligence.
Barriers to Closer Coordination
During the second Trump administration, the challenges to making progress in these two areas will be both structural and political. Many of the longstanding barriers to implementation are well-known and include: aligning incentives between commercial producers and government procurement; restrictive export control laws; over-classification of information; incompatible security standards; and limited bureaucratic bandwidth.
Progress, while uneven, has been made on all these fronts. In 2024, for example, the DIU began allocating $983 million, and since 2016, has executed $1.7 billion in prototype contract awards and $5.5 billion in production contract awards to tech companies. In August of the same year, the United States approved amended export control laws that allow for the sharing of most military and dual use technologies with Australia and the United Kingdom. The Biden administration established a Strategic Trade Dialogue with New Delhi to review bilateral export control laws and made it easier for commercial space companies to sell to Indian partners. Still, there is much more that needs to be done to overcome barriers to cooperation and improve information sharing.
The political challenges to closer cooperation could, however, be more disruptive and unpredictable. President Trump has tasked Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy Michael Kratsios to secure the United States’ “position as the unrivaled world leader in critical and emerging technologies” at the same time as the Department of Government Efficiency is disrupting the federal government’s support for basic science research and development. While the Trump administration has not yet demonstrated the same level of hostility to American allies in the Indo-Pacific as it has toward NATO—Marco Rubio met with foreign ministers from the Quad on his first day as secretary of state, and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth used his March trip to Asia to reassure allies of the United States’ intention to establish deterrence and prioritize the region—concerns remain about how constant Washington’s commitments are as Trump pursues an America First foreign policy, especially as the State Department is reportedly planning large reductions in personnel and oversea presence. As Prime Minister Anthony Albanese put it after Australia was hit with ten percent tariffs, American actions “have consequences for how Australians see this relationship.”
In addition, Trump’s tariffs and economic policies are likely to orient many U.S. partners’ technology strategy toward developing a greater degree of autonomy and control. Even in areas where they do not have competitive advantages, regional partners may feel the need to invest to achieve certain levels of technological capability so as not to be at a strategic disadvantage. South Korea, for example, may be more inclined to pursue a sovereign foundation model, one developed locally and trained on domestic data in order to encode Korean language, culture, and customs.
Possible Future Scenarios
Given these political headwinds to greater coordination and collaboration, three outcomes appear possible. First, the uncertainty and wide policy swings that have characterized the first months of the Trump administration are followed by a greater degree of stability and continuity. As occurred during the first Trump administration, high-level U.S. leaders would demonstrate commitment to the Indo-Pacific and the everyday work of technology interaction would continue relatively uninterrupted. Moreover, the Defense Department might emerge from the new administration’s budget and administrative reviews empowered to speed acquisition reform, shifting more resources to the “new primes” and defense-tech start-ups. Early in 2025, for example, Secretary Hegseth directed the Pentagon to embrace a rapid software acquisition pathway and use commercial solutions to speed up the procurement of digital tools.
At the other end of the spectrum, the disruption could lead to greater distrust and hedging against American influence. Indo-Pacific partners would increasingly look to strengthen their tech capabilities, both independently and in regional agreements that do not include the United States. Nations in the region already appear to be doing that on the trade front, with China, Japan, and South Korea agreeing to “closely cooperate for a comprehensive and high-level” talks on a free trade agreement deal to promote “regional and global trade.” Beijing and New Delhi have taken preliminary steps to reduce tensions after their 2022 deadly border clash.
China would certainly try to take advantage of this sidelining of the United States to diffuse commercial CET capabilities in the region. In an example drawn from another region, Brazil, in a move to reduce its dependence on Starlink, announced in November 2024 that it will partner with SpaceSail, a Chinese state-backed company, to develop high speed internet access through low Earth orbit satellites, after a dispute with Elon Musk over alleged misinformation on X.
Neither of these first two options seem most likely. While Indo-Pacific countries will look to Beijing to ameliorate the disruptions of tariffs, they are suspicious of becoming more dependent on Chinese firms and wary of the security and privacy risks that come with closer integration in the Chinese tech stack. Moreover, for many CET, there is no substitute for the United States as a partner. In the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s Critical Technology Tracker, China and the United States dominate in 44 categories. There is a large gap between them and everyone else.
There are no signs that the White House is reconsidering its approach to allies and partners. But, even if the Trump administration moves back toward a more predictable, ally-oriented foreign policy, the loss of expertise and budgets that are the result of cuts to federal agencies raise doubts of whether the United States would have the capacity to move forward.
The result will be a very mixed picture for Indo-Pacific technological deterrence. Each of the individual partners can be expected to make progress on the efforts to speed defense uses of commercial technologies, and there will be continued cooperation on specific technologies in multilateral and bilateral fora. But the pace of innovation, adoption, and diffusion will lag what would occur with greater integration and cooperation, leaving China with greater confidence that it can achieve parity in the region.