Remote Christmas Island in WA tipped to host Google’s ‘connectivity hub’ in transformational tech project

Australia’s remote Christmas Island territory is soon expected to host a new “connectivity hub” for subsea cables that stretch across the Indian Ocean, setting up Western Australia as a potential future home for massive data centres.

Technology giant Google has just announced plans to establish a Trans-Indian Ocean subsea cable system connecting the Maldives, Christmas Island and Oman to improve digital connectivity.

Under the “Dhivaru” project, Google says it will invest in the creation of two new connectivity hubs, saying the Maldives and Christmas Island are “naturally positioned” to “help improve digital connectivity for the region”.

The Reuters news agency has previously reported Google was planning to build a large artificial intelligence data centre on Christmas Island after signing a cloud deal with the Australia’s Defence Department earlier this year.

On Friday the Federal Territories Minister Kristy McBain was tight lipped on what was proposed for Christmas Island, insisting it was still in “the planning stages” and she would not be drawn on if there was any military component to the project.

“There’s been a range of proposals for data centres, for potential rocket launches, for a resort - the community there are really engaged in trying to, I guess, make sure that economic development is done on more than one particular industry,” she said.

“But we will continue to work with the Christmas Island community around a whole range of proposals that are there for Christmas Island,” Minister McBain said when questioned by The Nightly.

“That data centre is still in the planning stages, there is some work going on with the Christmas Island local council at this point in time, so I’ll leave some commentary on that until later.”

Asked if there was a military component to the new proposal, the Minister said she couldn’t comment “too much” but insisted “at this stage there are still a range of things that are being put in place”.

Back in 2022 the now Premier of Western Australia, Roger Cook, signed off on plans to turn the state into the southern hemisphere’s global hub for data centres when he was Deputy Premier.

In July this year, Mr Cook hailed the installation of a $400 million sub-sea hyper-cable as a major milestone, that could turn Perth into the “Dubai” of data.

But industry sources are worried that progress on infrastructure has been too slow.

Former Army brigadier and UNSW Security and Defence PLuS executive director Ian Langford has warned the window of opportunity is closing.

“Less than five (years), because by the end of this decade the hard wiring of the global system will be pretty well set,” he said.

“There’s a lot of private equity and capital globally that’s looking to invest in these systems and that’s not going to last forever.

“There’s about $350 billion floating around at the moment, looking to be part of this technology uplift.”

Former senior diplomat Paul Myler, who has been appointed the Australian Submarine Agency’s inaugural AUKUS advocate, said America’s tech giants have identified energy as the key and that puts Western Australia in the box seat.

“I was in Washington in March and the one thing that was clear was that they were very, very focused on unlocking energy,” he said.

“The race to be successful on AI was purely as a manufacturing process, which requires cheap inputs to be effective.

“It requires chips which they had in abundance, talent which they had in abundance and energy being the key differential that they needed to solve.

“Singapore has been the hub for data throughout the Indo Pacific for over a decade … they can’t continue that.

“They don’t have the energy and they don’t have the land and the demand is only going through the roof.”

Science and Innovation Minister Stephen Dawson said there is significant interest in WA, and negotiations are underway.

“We’ve got a crack team,” he said.

“We’re engaging with some big players from around the world … Since the data centre prospectus was released we’ve had two big data centres open in WA and there’s a third one on the way. “