Within hours of Telstra’s major outage on Wednesday, speculation was running ahead of evidence about the true source of the national chaos.

Deputy One Nation leader Barnaby Joyce suggested Chinese hackers may have been behind the disruption, linking the outage to Beijing’s known cyber capabilities and broader strategic assertiveness in the region.

“I don’t want to be paranoid, or a conspiracy theorist,” Mr Joyce said. “But we know there’s the capacity for China to affect that sort of software or network.”

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor was more careful, saying he had “no idea” whether there was any connection between the outage and China’s sea-based missile launch in the South Pacific this week. But he also said he understands why Australians were “drawing that connection”.

The problem is zero evidence has been presented linking China, or any other hacker group to Telstra’s outage.

Telstra says it knows the problem, not the cause

The telco’s acting chief executive Michael Ackland told the media the $57 billion telco giant knows the issue behind the outage, but not the root cause.

The issue is servers failed to update in two Telstra-owned Melbourne and Sydney data centres. But why they failed is a mystery the company is working to answer.

“We don’t yet know the root cause [of the outage], we’re investigating urgently and will provide updates,” said Mr Ackland. “At this stage we’ve nothing to indicate malicious activity, but we’ve been in contact with all regulators and government agencies to that effect.”

Australia has reason to take Chinese cyber threats seriously. In 2024, the Australian Signals Directorate’s Australian Cyber Security Centre warned about a group named APT40, among others, linked to the Chinese state’s cybersecurity capabilities.

“APT40 has repeatedly targeted Australian networks as well as government and private sector networks in the region, and the threat they pose to our networks is ongoing,” the agency warned.

China is also the nation’s key trading partner and an easy punchbag in Australian politics.

It’s powerful, authoritarian, strategically assertive, and the subject of public suspicion. A mystery outage, a missile launch in the South Pacific and a deal between Australia and Fiji make it easy to jump to far-fetched conclusions - or what Mr Joyce called paranoia.

Wednesday’s political theatre even has shades of Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist witch hunts in 1950s America. Then accusations were often made with little evidence and public fear became a political weapon. Those who raised the alarm styled themselves as defenders of the nation. Those who urged caution, risked being dismissed as naive.

Telstra faces tough week

Whatever the source of the outage, Telstra’s management now face a tough week after chaos spread across the country on Wednesday morning.

Rail networks in Victoria and New South Wales were shut and customers in every major city were unable to access the internet or make calls.

Telstra owes the public and its shareholder base a full explanation.

Moreover, the company also said it was not aware of any triple 0 or emergency calls not being connected due to the outage and was auditing that reputationally-sensitive conclusion.

In November 2023, Optus chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin quit after a nationwide outage knocked out mobile, internet and phone services for about 14 hours, including some emergency calls.

In 2025, Optus came under heavier scrutiny after another outage was linked to emergency call failures and up to four deaths. It ended up blaming that outage on human error, or its own staff for not following instructions during an update to a firewall.

All this means, Telstra chief executive’s Vicki Brady’s absence on annual leave is awkward timing.

Mr Ackland was left to face the music as acting chief executive, while the company tried to explain a crisis it doesn’t fully understand.

Opposition Leader Mr Taylor has called on Ms Brady to return to work. Telstra’s board will also understand that leadership visibility matters when infrastructure fails.

Shares traded down 2.3 per cent at $4.96 in the afternoon.