A shortened version of this was published in The Spectator Australia – here.
In the book of great evasions of responsibility through history, a new chapter to be added concerns the prowess of the government of Malaysia with respect to MH370. For more than twelve years now, up to and including January 2026 when they called off the latest search at a critical moment, Malaysian officials have managed to satisfy the world that they are not withholding any information and that their efforts to find the plane have been in earnest. It has been a foreign relations performance for the ages, one for which only a no-frills account, capable of honestly depicting dishonesty, will suffice.
If I was writing it, I would argue that the foundation of Malaysia’s success came with a masterstroke in the first week. By this time, the Malaysian government was in a right royal mess. Its military had not sent up a jet to monitor the plane flying off-course back over the peninsula. Malaysian Airlines had not issued an alert until four hours after the plane disappeared from civilian radar. And, on day four, the Malaysian government admitted that it had known from the beginning that the plane had flown west to the Andaman Sea and that the searching until that time had all been in the wrong place. Without a leg to stand on, Malaysian officials explained at this time that, as an ancient nation not yet in-sync with the pace of the twenty-first century, they are prone to bumbling mistakes.
This was accepted around the world. The mayhem of the opening days was attributed to Malaysian ‘cultural issues’. Any other nation would have been running from accusations of wrongdoing as fast as OJ Simpson driving down a Los Angeles freeway. Not Malaysia. By playing the ‘minnow nation card’, it had ensured that no such accusations would be coming its way.
The writer will need to be able to convey the emotion that came over us when, as Malaysian confidence grew, we realised we were witnessing something special. Who will ever forget how Malaysia withheld the cargo manifest and eventually released it in redacted form. Or when, to restrict the search to the Southern Indian Ocean, they dismissed all other evidence and eye-witness accounts. The fact is, there is evidence to support the possibility of the plane having come down in any of several places around the globe, but Malaysia succeeded in establishing a single-theory investigation as world-best practice. From this time there could no longer be any doubt that, with respect to the timeless arts of deception and subterfuge, a serious new talent had emerged.
It would also be remiss not to credit Malaysia for its nuanced strategy with respect to the west. Malaysia detected a peculiarity in western psychology, whereby western governments, when confronted with a problem to resolve, conflate all possibilities in such a way as to treat them as equals, irrespective of their objective likelihoods. Born of a desire to be righteous and noble, it is a condition which renders the western mind incapable of discerning a truth, no matter how self-evident that truth may be. Malaysia turned this to advantage. With each move it made, it increased the distance between the truth and the virtue of western understandings, until, over time, the gulf became wide enough to drive a truck through.
This Malaysia did when manipulating the search efforts. Contrary to law and common sense, Malaysia persuaded the world that no search for MH370 could be undertaken without its consent. In fact, the only relevant law is that, if the wreckage is found, only Malaysia, as the owner, can recover it. Other than that, anyone can go out searching at any time. In January 2017, however, Malaysia called off the search in the South Indian Ocean and declared that no new search would be permitted without ‘credible new evidence’. Historians may well remember this as Malaysia’s finest hour. Against all odds, it had arrogated control of future searches to itself whilst maintaining its bona fides.
But wresting control of future searches is one thing. Stopping them altogether is another. Here Malaysian officials met with a whole new sphere of difficulty. Knowing that a blanket ban on searches would be a bridge too far, they made the process of applying for an approval more onerous than petitioning the monarch. In December 2017, the applicant, deep sea company Ocean Infinity, was subjected to a gruelling panel interview and interrogated for days on their premise for a new search. Malaysia was ultimately forced to give them the go-ahead because they were offering to search for free, asking for compensation only if they found the plane, but Malaysia ensured they had minimal chance of success by limiting them to 55 search days, to be undertaken within a six-month window. This was a stroke of genius on Malaysia’s part, one which, again, drew no international opprobrium.
Six years later, when Ocean Infinity applied again, Malaysian irritation was more transparent. Although the contract terms were the same as in 2018, Malaysia delayed its preparation for a year, which gave Ocean Infinity a search period of only February to April 2025 before the weather turned.
Then, when Ocean Infinity resumed on 30 December 2025, Malaysia saved their best till last. Ocean Infinity had searched two expert-designated ‘hot spots’ and were due to start on the third and most-anticipated, the ‘Weak Signal Propagation Reporter’ (WSPR) area at 33 degrees south, identified through analysis of amateur radio wavelengths. On 23 January, however, with Ocean Infinity still 27 search days in credit, Malaysian officials called them off. They cited bad weather whilst Ocean Infinity themselves said no such thing. This calling-off of the search infers that the plane is indeed in the WSPR area, or could have been a decoy manoeuvre, such are the machinations of the mercurial minnow, Malaysia.
Malaysia’s detractors might say that the heavy lifting in this operation was actually done by the Chinese Communist Party and that Malaysia was just the front man. MH370, they would say, was for all effects and purposes a domestic China flight, in that its destination was Beijing; it was a codeshare flight with China Southern Airways; more than half the passengers were Chinese nationals; and the cargo was all China-owned. If something went wrong as it flew over the newly-militarised South China Sea, these people would say, it would have been the CCP under Xi Jinping, then only a year into his Presidency, who would have had the motive to engineer a panicked cover-up. After all, it is known the world over that the CCP is the go-to institution for expertise in the disappearing of evidence. These critics would insist that Malaysia was only ever taking instructions and they would point to the fact that Malaysia and China are known to have colluded in the cover-up of a commercial airline incident before. That was in 2000 when a Malaysian Airlines flight on the same route in the opposite direction – Beijing to Kuala Lumpur – was carrying canisters of a Chinese shipment, believed to have been chemicals that were a precursor to nerve gas, which were destined ultimately for Iran, but the canisters broke open mid-flight, forcing an emergency landing in Kuala Lumpur, where the Malaysian government dug a huge hole near the tarmac and buried the plane in its entirety. As in 2000, so again in 2014, these people would say. Malaysia has only ever been doing China’s bidding as the CCP tries to erase MH370 from history, like Tiananmen Square.
But, whatever CCP involvement there may or may not have been, take nothing away from Malaysia. Their officials were nothing short of superb. That is not to say that mistakes were not made. In 2015, when pieces of what have been assumed to be debris from MH370 were found on the east coast of Africa, Malaysia showed no interest in collecting or seeing them. This was a lapse in concentration. On 5 March 2023, Malaysia’s Transport Minister, Antyhony Loke, said that he was hoping to ‘çlose the book’ on MH370. This was overly-candid. When Ocean Infinity was about to embark on its first search in 2018, Malaysia at the last minute sent some air force officers to Fremantle in an attempt to board the Ocean Infinity ship and monitor their activities. This was over-zealous. And early this year, although Malaysia brought an end to Ocean Infinity’s search on 23 January, it was not until six weeks later that Malaysia announced that the search was at and end. The date they chose for this announcement was 8 March 2026, the day that family members of the victims were marking twelve years since losing their loved ones and having no closure. This was thoughtless. But these and other mistakes only add to the stature of the performance, for despite them, Malaysia’s reputation remains untarnished.
The writer of the chapter needs to feel the weight of responsibility. A hundred years from now, people will want to understand why the wreckage of MH370 has still not been found. Only a sincere account of Malaysian insincerity will enable that. The writer needs to be able to illustrate how a select group of people in positions of were able to hold a prodigious lie over the heads of the other 8.1 billion on the planet. In doing so, it will serve as a template for effective twenty-first century statecraft.
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