Because of the earthquakes and the potential for conflict with China, Taiwan’s leaders want to accelerate plans to make the island more resilient to communications breakdowns and direct attacks on its digital infrastructure.
It can be an impossible task.
Audrey Tang, who heads Taiwan’s Ministry of Digital Affairs, said she wants the island’s $740 billion economy to be able to handle the possible collapse of all its communications in the event of an emergency at the end of next year. year.
The threat isn’t theoretical: Taiwan’s Matsu Islands found themselves in a digital bind after two of their submarine internet cables were cut by Chinese-flagged boats in February. Before that, a 2006 earthquake snapped eight undersea cables around Taiwan, taking weeks to repair and disrupting internet, banking and cross-border trade in much of Asia. Both events are harsh reminders of what can happen in a conflict or natural disaster.
“The main lesson we learned is psychological,” Tang said in an interview on May 17. “How to manage the expectation of reduced bandwidth, how to prioritize bandwidth usage, using OK with slightly higher latency, etc.”
Tang said Taiwan’s worst-case scenario would be the destruction of the island’s physical communication points: the three major telecommunications providers as well as their power supplies.
“The enemy knows” where the main facilities on the island are because the information is public, Tang said. “So we can imagine that they would be disrupted, jammed or destroyed by a large earthquake.”
Tang mentions “earthquakes” a lot. Besides referring to natural disasters — Taiwan sits on a tectonically-active region known as the ‘ring of fire’ — it’s also a euphemism for incidents related to tensions with China, including cyber attacks.
“It’s a very apt comparison because an earthquake doesn’t give you many warnings,” Tang, 42, said.
China views Taiwan as part of its territory and has vowed to bring it under its control one day, by force if necessary. President Tsai Ing-wen’s government has rejected Beijing’s claim, saying the island is now a de facto independent country. And with Taiwan holding presidential elections in early 2024, China is expected to step up efforts to influence the vote.
But building the digital strength Tang wants by late 2024 is a tough target.
The island’s disaster response plan calls for the construction of 700 satellite receivers placed across Taiwan. Some of the receivers are fixed, others are mobile, and they must be configured to receive communications from several constellations of satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and Medium Earth Orbit (MEO).
To get there, the government opened bids for research institutes to participate in the proof-of-concept round of testing and verification. So far, at least three have signed up, Tang said. The winner will start working with satellite providers. Among the providers, the French-Luxembourg company SES Global currently has two receivers in Taiwan.
Tang said OneWeb, a satellite provider with investors including the UK government, Indian conglomerate Bharti Global and Softbank Group Corp., has announced its interest, as has Project Kuiper, an initiative from Amazon. com inc. satellites. But none of these exist today.
Starlink Inc.’s only SpaceX satellite constellation. has the ability to provide live coverage today. Tang described Starlink as a potential provider, but added that he is following more than one participant to “make sure that if there is a crisis, many constellations will have to be destroyed or disrupted so that we cannot communicate” with the world. outside.
Vulnerable Cables
That means that currently, Taiwan’s satellite capacity is small compared to the coverage it currently gets from its 14 undersea cables, said Kenny Huang, chairman and chief executive officer of the Taiwan Network Information Center, a non- profit partially owned by Taiwan’s government.
Current satellite capacity “only adds about 0.01% to the transmission capacity of submarine cables,” Huang said. “It is almost impossible to use satellites as a back up or to improve communication stability.”
However, submarine cables are vulnerable. Huang added that the plan to have 700 receivers is not enough to meet the communication needs of the island’s 23 million people.
Tang called the 700 receivers he initially intended to be the least in order to maintain important communications. The government has allocated NT$550 million ($18 million) in 2023-2024 to subsidize the testing and verification of the disaster response program.
He added that the self-governing island had drawn lessons from the conflict in Ukraine, which has faced repeated Russian cyber attacks on its infrastructure and population. But Ukraine has access to the Starlink system, which has helped keep communications up and running since the war began.
It is unclear whether that is a realistic option for Taiwan. There are questions about whether SpaceX owner Elon Musk, whose Tesla Inc. has significant investment in China, does want the geopolitical headache of helping Taiwan. The billionaire is expected to visit China this week in what will be his first trip to the country in three years, according to people familiar with the matter.
Musk suggested last year in comments to the Financial Times that Taiwan should agree to become a special administrative zone with China, angering Taiwanese officials and drawing praise from Beijing.
Referring to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s daily video briefings throughout the war, Tang said it was important for the government to be able to communicate with its people as well as the outside world.
That means local video calls should be handled at home, he said. However today, Zoom sessions are initially directed abroad before a local connection is made. Tang added that Alphabet Inc.’s Google Meet. has a fully domestic route, ensuring it will still be available if Taiwan’s undersea cables are cut.
Asked about this part of the government’s plan, Zoom Video Communications Inc. and Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Microsoft Corp. declined to comment.
Underscoring his sense of urgency, Tang said the island’s digital infrastructure has already been mined by millions of largely automated attacks by suspected Chinese-allied actors. That will only get worse in the case of a future earthquake or other emergency, Tang said.
“We see a lot of live reports from Taiwan that are completely synthetic,” he said, referring to “deeply fake” videos and other disinformation efforts. “That’s what we’re preparing ourselves for at the end of next year.”
Photo: Microchip and Taiwanese flag displayed on phone screen can be seen in this multiple exposure photo taken in Krakow, Poland on April 10, 2023. Photo credit: Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto/Getty Images
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