A former Australian prime minister staking his post-office reputation on what lies beneath the ocean has an almost poetic, if slightly unsettling, quality. Australia’s 2018–2022 governor, Scott Morrison, has quietly accepted a position as a strategic adviser at the recently established Seafloor Minerals Fund, a company that is positioning itself at the edge of one of the world’s most contentious resource frontiers. Former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is seated next to him in an advisory role. Before you even get to the actual mining, this pairing raises questions.
The fund is associated with DYNE Asset Management, a venture capital firm that has positioned itself as a maritime technology investor with a focus on both military and civilian applications since the AUKUS announcement in 2021. The fact that DYNE has been investing actual funds in deep-sea mining projects in the Pacific is less widely publicized. The company committed more than $5 million to plans aimed at the Cook Islands’ seabed within days of the AUKUS announcement. Now that an Odyssey-led consortium has obtained an exploration licence, an additional $57 million has been pledged. Notably, Odyssey is the same American treasure-hunting firm that is currently suing Mexico for billions of dollars over a failed mining proposal in its waters. To put it mildly, the money’s ancestry is fascinating.
It turns out that the ocean floor is more than just dark and deep. It contains rare metals like cobalt, copper, manganese, and nickel that are valued at trillions of dollars, according to prospectors. These metals are used in everything from weapons guidance systems to batteries for electric vehicles. Many of those reserves are located on land in China, Russia, and parts of Africa, where politics are complex and supply chains are brittle. Businesses such as The Metals Company, whose Australian CEO Gerard Barron referred to Morrison’s involvement as proof of the industry’s “inevitability,” contend that the seabed provides a more strategically secure and clean alternative. Barron’s remark, “Say what you like about ScoMo,” conveyed the impression of a man who is aware of controversy but has chosen to face it head-on.
Here, the national security framing is used with such care that it’s difficult to ignore. Proponents seem to be making the case that mining the seabed is more than just commercial by linking deep-sea mining to AUKUS, a defense agreement with significant political clout in Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom. It’s tactical. It’s essential. Duncan Currie, an international environmental lawyer, stated unequivocally that he doesn’t think it’s acceptable for a former prime minister to be seen “chasing the dollar under the guise of national security.” His worries go beyond rhetoric. He cautioned that a Western-led race for seabed minerals would probably “escalate into an arms race” rather than discourage Chinese activity in the deep Pacific. He might be correct, and nobody in the room seems eager to fully model this scenario.
The questions that are difficult to answer are those related to the environment. Large-scale mining could disrupt fish stocks, change carbon sequestration, and harm ecosystems that have evolved over millions of years, according to scientists who study the deep sea, which is still poorly understood, seldom visited, and astoundingly complex. Concerned that urgency framing will push regulators past the point where a sober environmental assessment is even feasible, Greenpeace and others have been keeping a close eye on the national security angle. For its part, the SMF asserts that metals can be extracted with “minimal environmental impact,” a term that tends to mean different things depending on who is funding the study.
Australia is currently at a crossroads. At its national conference, the Labor government supported a moratorium in theory, joining 25 other nations that have demanded a halt until the dangers are better understood. However, the Albanese government has not yet made a formal announcement about its stance, and pressure is mounting from both sides—mining interest on the one hand, environmental concern on the other. It remains to be seen if Morrison’s participation speeds up or muddies that discussion. Some people in Canberra believe that the strategic framing is already having an impact.
Australia’s relationship with the sea and prime ministers who go too near to it is peculiar. In December 1967, the 17th prime minister, Harold Holt, vanished into the ocean close to Portsea. His whereabouts remain a mystery in Australian political history. Morrison is diving in for quite different reasons, and the water he is swimming in is symbolic. However, both the depth and the currents that pull from all sides are real.
