Geopolitical legal iceberg - Former Australian PM Abbott linked to Antarctic land claim pitch

The chair of a satellite communications firm whose board includes former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has called on the Trump administration to claim the largest unclaimed landmass on Earth – in Antarctica.

The firm, the US-based Rivada Networks, says it is building a “fully interconnected satellite network in low Earth orbit” that sells on-demand connectivity to governments and enterprises.

Abbott joined its board in November, according to a company statement.

Writing in conservative blog The American Mind, Rivada Networks chairman Declan Ganley argues that the 1.5 million km² Marie Byrd Land in West Antarctica is legally open for acquisition – and that the Trump administration should act by US Independence Day on 4 July.

There is no evidence that the former Australian prime minister supports Ganley’s proposal.

But between 2013 and 2015, Abbott led the nation with Antarctica’s largest territorial claim – a claim that is nearly three times the size of Greenland, and one that Canberra views as fundamental to its territorial identity and security.

Why the Antarctic Treaty shuts the door on ‘new claims’

Ganley, an Irish businessman and founder of the former Eurosceptic Libertas party, states that the Antarctic Treaty governs the continent for “peaceful, scientific use” and suggests that a “sovereignty declaration changes nothing about current extraction rules”.

But his call on Washington to acquire Marie Byrd Land, otherwise known as the South Pole’s only “unclaimed sector”, hinges on a distinction that is not recognised by the 1959 Cold War disarmament pact.

The treaty governs all continental territory south of 60°S latitude, so the Pacific-facing unclaimed sector’s status is also governed by a law that does not tolerate any “new claim”.

Article IV states: “No new claim, or enlargement of an existing claim, to territorial sovereignty in Antarctica shall be asserted while the present treaty is in force.”

This provision is widely interpreted as freezing all territorial claims – both existing and potential. It does not distinguish between claimed and “unclaimed” land. No signatory state can lawfully assert sovereignty over any part of Antarctica while the treaty remains in force. The treaty also has no expiry date. Unless its parties collectively decide otherwise, it remains in force indefinitely, forever and a day.

Seven states – Argentina, Australia, Chile, France, New Zealand, Norway and the UK – maintain massive historic claims. (Ganley’s piece leaves New Zealand out in the cold by mentioning just six.) Australia’s claim, formalised in 1933, covers 42% of the continent. The overlapping claims of Argentina, Chile and the UK are about three times Greenland’s size, while the unclaimed sector spans roughly three-quarters the size of Greenland.

Yes, the US and the Soviet Union, both founding consultative parties, reserved the right to make claims in the future. But they did so fully aware that their treaty membership prevents those claims from being exercised.

Ganley’s interpretation – that unclaimed land is open to acquisition – is therefore incorrect, and his call to the Trump administration is geopolitically provocative.

‘Those networks require polar coverage’

Ganley’s argument also leans heavily on the strategic importance of low Earth orbit tech, including its role in carrying “military communications” and other sensitive data.

He notes “the strategic case runs deeper than oil and minerals. The great infrastructure competition of the 21st century will be fought over low Earth orbit communications networks, the constellation of satellites that will carry the world’s most sensitive data, military communications and economic traffic,” he writes. “Those networks require polar coverage.”

The US already has three major stations in other parts of Antarctica that can do the job of polar coverage.

As long as it does not violate peaceful or environmentally responsible usage, the US also has the legal option of installing a remote facility in the unclaimed sector – without claiming an inch of ice or rock.

Even so, leaning into sensitive and military-linked communications touches on debates that are already politically charged in the US and Australia.

In recent years, commentators in both countries have repeatedly questioned Antarctic communications infrastructure with potential military applications, particularly in the context of China, and what that may mean for a treaty system built on restricting the continent to peaceful purposes.

Ganley and Rivada Networks have taken CNN to Ireland’s High Court over its reporting that the first Trump administration pushed the Pentagon to award the company a no-bid, mid-spectrum contract.

Russkaya, research stations and recycled fears

Even setting law aside, the geopolitical reality is prohibitive.

Ganley notes that “in March 2025, Russia and China jointly announced plans to build new research stations in Marie Byrd Land”, but there is no public evidence of any joint announcement – merely separate state announcements made within weeks of each other.

As Daily Maverick first reported, the Russian announcement was made the day after Washington announced strategic cuts to Antarctic infrastructure. These “jointly announced” plans, Ganley continues, are out of the “same playbook Beijing ran in the South China Sea: establish a presence, build infrastructure, wait for the world to normalise it and then dare someone to undo it”.

But there is nothing novel about Russia’s presence in the unclaimed sector.

Its Russkaya field base, which it now seeks to revive into a “permanent station”, is 45 years old. Like Russia, China’s plans are legal, so any attempt by the US to convert presence into ownership would run into treaty constraints and the legitimate activity of other states.

Even if Trump decided Antarctica was a “BIG, POORLY RUN, PIECE OF ICE!!!” like Greenland, there is – in theory – no fast pathway from participation to a territorial claim without abandoning the treaty.

Leaving isn’t instant – it means treaty wrangling and a two-year clock, assuming Washington values its Antarctic Treaty depositary role more than its precarious one at Nato.

2048: A real inflection point

The Irish communications entrepreneur’s argument may be legally flawed, yet it is not strategically irrelevant.

As he observes, advances in communications and increasing global competition are raising the continent’s importance.

The environmental provisions to the treaty, including the mining ban, may indeed be reviewed at any point from January 2048 and Ganley is correct this is “only 22 years away”. He describes the ban as a “prohibition that depends on the continued goodwill of all signatories”.

Daily Maverick’s own investigative reporting has shown that Russia’s Rosgeo has repeatedly used Cape Town as a launchpad to identify what it describes as 70 billion tons (500 billion barrels) of Southern Ocean oil and gas. We have also revealed that Russian Antarctic geologists linked to the Kremlin’s mineral explorer have described the ban as a “gentleman’s agreement”.

Russia may have already weaponised Antarctic mineral politics against other members of the Antarctic Treaty System by arresting the Ukrainian marine biologist Leonid Pshenichnov who remains in Crimean detention for “high treason”. The alleged initial charges included “threatening” Russian hydrocarbon interests in Antarctica.

They may now have been changed to opposition to Russian continuous trawling.

“With one bold stroke, President Trump could expand America’s sovereign territory by nearly 20% and recover the largest unclaimed tract of land left on the planet,” Ganley pitches.

“The poles are the global chokepoints of satellite communications,” he argues in precisely the sort of logic that would appeal to Trump.

The Arctic may be on everyone’s radar now, he adds, but “the southern pole has barely registered”.

Ganley doubles down in The Wall Street Journal

No response was received to questions sent to Abbott’s office on 8 April within the 24-hour deadline. Ganley was contacted at 7.41am ET through Rivada Networks.

A company spokesperson replied: “We have no comment.”

Within hours, Ganley republished a version of his March opinion article in The Wall Street Journal, refining legal interpretations challenged by Daily Maverick.

The treaty, he now wrote, did not “permanently bar future claims on previously unclaimed territory”. (Emphasis ours.)

He added: “Some will argue that any new claim violates the spirit of the Antarctic Treaty. Legally, that position is weak.”

Declan maintained his call on Washington to declare “sovereignty over Marie Byrd Land”.

Thwaites a minute: nothing new under the ice

The co-author of Unfrozen: The Fight for the Future of the Arctic, Professor Klaus Dodds, has written extensively about Trump’s plans to dominate the Western Hemisphere. In a social media comment on Thursday about Ganley’s Wall Street Journal gambit, he said that Antarctica’s territorial laws may not escape the “crises” of a changing world order.

But responding to a request for comment from Daily Maverick, the sci-tech dean at Middlesex University wryly asked: “Is it worth saying that the US did actively consider claiming Marie Byrd Land in the 1940s and discounted it in the 1950s?”

Ganley’s call for a US presence in the unclaimed sector may be bold, but Professor Alan Hemmings, a Canberra-based expert in Antarctic geopolitics, also confirms it’s hardly avant-garde.

“The US has long had a substantial annual presence in the unclaimed sector around its research activities at the globally significant Thwaites and Pine Island glaciers,” says Hemmings, a governance professor at New Zealand’s University of Canterbury. “These projects offer a ready way to continue a US presence in the sector.” DM