Labor MP Ed Husic has a blunt warning: a handful of US tech firms could switch off the AI tools Australia runs on.

On 15 July the Prime Minister used a national address to label artificial intelligence (AI) a national interest, announcing a new Office of AI inside his department, mandatory rules for large data centres, and a digital duty of care for big tech.

At the same time Sydney is being tipped as one of the world's data centre hotspots, with firms like Anthropic and OpenAI scouting sites and the build-out talked up as the next mining boom.

The catch: Australia has no frontier AI model of its own, so we store the data without controlling the technology.

Digital Rights Watch founder Lizzie O'Shea and the McKinnon Institute's Tom Mooney, once chief of staff to Foreign Minister Penny Wong, argue Australia holds more cards than it thinks: a stable democracy, cheap renewables and a strong bargaining position.

They make the case for shaping big tech rather than receiving it and explain why Australians rank among the world's most sceptical about AI even as heavy users. In this episode Hamish Macdonald presses them on jobs, sovereignty, and whether any government can force these companies to care.

Guest:

Lizzie O'Shea - Digital Rights Watch

Tom Mooney - McKinnon Institute

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