A US withdrawal would delay rather than automatically end AUKUS submarines

How damaging would it be if the United States left AUKUS?

It would cause serious cost and schedule problems, especially by removing the Virginia-class bridge, but British design sharing could keep an Australian nuclear-submarine path alive.

At the time of the recording, the United States had placed AUKUS under review rather than withdrawn from it. Existing technology-sharing agreements and British nuclear-submarine design capacity could still support Australia. The immediate losses would be the planned Virginia-class bridge boats, money already committed in the United States, and time while British construction capacity expanded. Canada might also find the resulting British-Australian design attractive, but the central Australian requirement remains a very large conventional submarine or a nuclear boat able to cover long distances.