#60 Weapon-Grade Carbon: Breaking the World's Quietest Dependency | Mark Livings - Part 2

Part 2 of this Intelligence Optimised episode goes from “carbon is everywhere” to “carbon decides who holds power” - in energy, defence, health and the wider Indo-Pacific.

Todd Crowley continues the conversation with Mark Livings, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Sweet Atoms, to unpack how advanced carbon materials move from lab slide to sovereign capability. They break down super activated carbon for energy storage, hard carbon anodes that double capacity, flexible glassy carbon coatings that laugh at re-entry heat, and a new cathode material built from transition metals instead of rare earths.

For defence and energy planners, the stakes are clear. Sovereign carbon underpins sovereign energy storage. Without it, lithium exposure, hydrogen leakage and foreign-controlled supply chains limit what Australia and its AUKUS partners can field, fuel and defend. With it, you can build batteries that carry more energy in a smaller footprint, plate submarines and missiles with stealthy, anti-fouling coatings, protect troops with lighter PPE, and keep critical sensors alive in extreme environments.

The conversation also tackles how to grow this as a genuinely sovereign industry. Mark outlines a pathway from deep-tech R&D in Brisbane through pilot plants to export-ready advanced manufacturing, tied to Australian universities, public capital and strategic OEM partners. He sketches how an AUKUS materials corridor for advanced carbon could work in practice, and how IP is protected with a mix of patents and trade secrets.

Across energy storage, critical materials, hydrogen, medical filtration and defence supply chains, the message is blunt: sovereign carbon is moving into the same category as critical minerals. Leaders who ignore it risk finding that their grids, fleets and compute all depend on someone else’s feedstock.

If you shape policy, budgets or capability in this space, this episode will help you see where carbon materials fit in your next brief, program or investment round. Find deeper briefs inside Vaxa Bureau.