Article: Australia’s window in the global AI race
Authored by Wayne Gowland – Chief Executive Officer at xAmplify
The AI race is reshaping global power dynamics.
Nations are competing not just to build smarter algorithms, but to own the data, infrastructure and standards that will define how the next decade of value is created.
The scale is extraordinary, with the Stanford AI Index 2025 showing that private AI investment in the US reached around US $109 billion — twelve times higher than China’s. While the US maintains its lead in organisational AI use, China recorded one of the steepest growth rates, with a 27-percentage-point increase in adoption.
This is no longer just a race for market share, but for rules. Whoever sets the standards for data, ethics and infrastructure will shape how economies function for decades to come.
Digital transformation has become the defining test of national resilience. Whether in government, infrastructure or essential services, every organisation is now expected to deliver faster, safer, and more efficiently, often with less.
What this means for Australia
For a middle power like Australia, the question is whether we compete in this global ecosystem as a designer and contributor of capability, or simply as an implementer and consumer of offshore technology.
We cannot match the scale of the US or Chinese ecosystems, but scale isn’t the only metric that matters. We can lead where trust, governance, ethics and stability are the measures of long-term competitiveness.
Australia already has the scaffolding in place. The Data and Digital Government Strategy (DDGS) sets a 2030 vision for “simple, secure and connected public services”, guided by some of the world’s most advanced AI-ethics frameworks and privacy laws.
But the challenge now is delivery. A large portion of our cloud-infrastructure and data-platform market is supplied by global hyperscale vendors, leaving domestic sovereign capability comparatively under-developed. While local providers exist, global players dominate Australia’s cloud and hyperscale hosting, shaping much of the digital foundation we depend on.
Sovereignty in this context does not mean isolation. It means having the capacity to build, host and secure essential digital systems on Australian terms, with trusted international partners, rather than being wholly dependent on offshore stacks and standards.
From frameworks to delivery
Across the public sector, agencies are under immense pressure to modernise, replacing legacy systems, automating manual processes and meeting rising citizen expectations, all while managing constrained budgets and escalating cyber risk. Many transformation programs fall short in developing the foundational capabilities required to enable enterprise wide digital transformation resulting in unrealised potential.
Too many AI pilots never make it past proof-of-concept because they are built on outdated infrastructure or disconnected from enterprise-scale data and security models.
The next productivity uplift won’t come from hype-driven AI projects. It will come from initiatives that bring together cloud migration, data governance, intelligent automation, secure platforms along with people change so that AI becomes operational, not experimental.
Turning strategy into capability
Infrastructure alone won’t deliver transformation. We must invest in people as technology change fails without the right skills to drive it. Australia needs multidisciplinary teams that combine data science, cyber security, ethics, law and service design. We should be upskilling our existing workforce, particularly within the public sector, while attracting new talent into roles that sit at the intersection of technology and policy.
Equally, we must build every new system with trust and transparency at its core. Trust has long been Australia’s advantage — in governance, in institutions and in digital systems. Each platform we design should embed accountability and assurance from the outset, with clear metrics that measure outcomes for citizens, not just efficiency or cost savings. People will only embrace AI when they understand how decisions are made and can rely on them to be fair, safe and explainable.
Finally, Australia must play a bigger role on the global stage. The rules for data and AI are still being written, and we should be at the table – helping shape democratic standards through global forums and conferences, and working closely with our regional neighbours to build shared frameworks for ethical, transparent and secure digital services. This is how we turn our values into influence and ensure that technology serves open societies, not just powerful ones.
AI will not wait
Other nations are already translating strategy into delivery. Canada’s Pan-Canadian AI Strategy links world-class talent, infrastructure and commercialisation of AI, while the UK’s Frontier AI Taskforceaddresses frontier AI research, safe infrastructure and governance. We have the same opportunity but only if we move decisively.
If we commit, Australia can lead as a trusted digital democracy in the region and globally, exporting our values as much as our capability.
If we don’t, we risk becoming the implementer of systems designed elsewhere, under standards set elsewhere, and forfeiting our chance to shape the digital era itself.