Its a great sound byte for the politicains. Politicians aren't known for the economic and business acumen. Sound bytes and promise of jobs get them elected.
Don't know the details of this project but if the cable is subsidized by the government it doesn't matter if it scales super or sublinearly, taxpayers are on the hook.
These kind of projects are getting proposed because the business case is painfully simple. Buy electricity cheap and sell it high. Its arbitrage. The price difference needs to be just enough to pay for the debt that funded construction.
Your politicans, like Malcolm Turnbull in 2017, believe that the laws of Australia trump the laws of Mathematics, in the context of trying to weaken strong encryption. In at least some areas, they need a better education.
Not the best example for a tech savvy person. He had that image as he made a heap of $$ investing in some early internet company, but yeah he didn't seem to actually know what he was doing tech wise.
His real crime was playing a part in destroying the fibre to the premise internet rollout across Australia. He thought he could do it cheaper with mixed copper/coaxial technology.
The laws of Australia do trump the laws of mathematics in that context though?
If the government forces Google to push out a version of FacebookMessenger.apk to the Play Store account belonging to janetlovescats93@gmail.com, which uploads hourly plaintext chat logs to a Google Drive folder that authorities can read, then I'm really not sure what the mathematics of Facebook Messenger's encryption can do?
> a) Politicians are typically more educated than say in the US.
As exhibit 'A' for the counterargument, I offer Kate Worden: NT's Minister for Environment, Climate Change and Water Security. Did you see her interview in Monday's "Water Grab" report by 4 Corners [1]?
One example of her logic: Farmers are planting circular fields, which is what you do for a central pivot water irrigation system, and Woden is saying with a straight face that irrigation is not being used and the cotton crop is only relying on rainfall with no dams or groundwater extraction involved.
Some choice words from the interview are that she is "sick of the science". There are lots of other goodies.
Don't know the details of this project but if the cable is subsidized by the government it doesn't matter if it scales super or sublinearly, taxpayers are on the hook.