Taiwan: Strength in Unity, Behind Innovation Power
Hello, I’m Ylli Bajraktari, CEO of the Special Competitive Studies Project. In this edition of SCSP’s newsletter, Senior Advisor Joe Wang offers highlights from a recent Transatlantic Delegation to Taiwan. Happy Double Ten Day to our friends in Taiwan!
Taiwan: Strength in Unity, Behind Innovation Power
Bringing the Transatlantic Community to Taiwan
I had the honor of joining a visit to Taiwan organized by the U.S. German Marshall Fund from October 2-4. Despite disruptions from Typhoon Krathon, our group held a full dialogue with the range of perspectives on the ground in Taipei (as well as Taiwan’s premier tech hub in Hsinchu for several members of the group who arrived early). The bottomline: Taiwan is strengthening its national resilience in the event of the worst contingency with the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and while Taiwan will do everything it can to defend itself, the United States, alongside its allies and partners, must be ready to assert its global leadership to deter aggression across the Taiwan Straits.
(Special thanks to GMF Chair Chris Schroeder, Senior Advisor Heather Conley, Indo-Pacific Program Managing Director Bonnie Glaser, and Program Manager Susanna Numminen, as well as our hosts from Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs for an amazing visit. Other members of the delegation included Ambassador Francesco Talo, former Diplomatic Advisor to the Italian Prime Minister; General (ret.) Rajmund Andrzejczak, former Chief of Defense of the Polish Armed Forces; Jessica Lewis, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs; and Nico Lange, Senior Fellow at the Munich Security Conference)
Innovation Power
Taiwan is well known as the Silicon Island and its chip manufacturing prowess was built up over decades. TSMC’s foundries produce world-leading chips flowing from its incredibly sophisticated production process that is hyper-focused on efficiency and effectiveness.
The extreme difficulty of producing leading-edge chips, which are now measured in the size of individual atoms, will allow TSMC to maintain its technological advantage in these chips for some time. However, we should have no doubt that Beijing is focused on catching up. The logic of the United States’ “small yard, high fence” approach is to slow down the PRC’s access to enabling technologies, such as extreme ultraviolet lithography machines, that can help PRC companies produce the leading-edge chips critical to unlocking the path to artificial general intelligence (AGI). Whichever nation achieves AGI first will reap the benefits across all elements of national power.
At the same time, this focus on the “small yard” risks losing focus on the rest of the yard – in this case the legacy chips that power almost all of the day-to-day use cases in our digital world, from IOT devices to our vehicles, as well as the bulk of our weapons platforms. The PRC has been pouring new subsidies into its domestic chips industries to not just innovate its way over our high fence but also dominate the production of legacy chips. The consequence is that the PRC can both cripple the resilience of our supply chain for legacy chips and threaten the security of a vast array of products and technologies beyond cutting-edge AI. Unlike for leading-edge chips, the enabling technologies for producing such mature chips are more accessible and therefore harder, if not impossible, to restrict via export controls. The United States will need to work with its allies and partners to consider what novel steps they can take to preserve the supply chain security of our legacy chips production.
Whole of Society Resilience
Our delegation began our agenda in Taiwan the week after President Lai had convened the first meeting of a new “Whole-of-Society Defense Resilience Committee,” intended to integrate national defense and civil response institutions to increase preparedness against any threats the island may face – from natural disasters to military invasion. A first big topic of discussion for our delegation around Taiwan’s resilience was the upcoming Taiwanese television series Zero Day, which dramatizes a potential PRC invasion of the island. While only a preview of a forthcoming work of fiction, the trailer offered a vivid portrayal of the threat and challenges to Taiwan’s resilience that the Resilience Committee may need to develop plans of actions to address. From the delegation’s discussions, it was clear that there is certainly a wealth of expertise and goodwill from international partners that Taiwan can tap into to support the new Committee’s work.
Moving from fiction to real life, we experienced the importance of resilience firsthand as Typhoon Krathon hit Taiwan, causing damage to the southern part of the island. This was the third typhoon Taiwan experienced this year.
The government called “Typhoon Days” on the first two days of our delegation’s schedule, closing government offices except for those dealing with the emergency. Nevertheless, our group connected with several private sector and civil society partners virtually and in person to learn about what the Taiwanese people are doing to address the challenges the PRC poses to Taiwan:
Doublethink Labs is a leading malign influence research institute that tracks the array of grey zone activities that the PRC is conducting against Taiwan.
Kuma Academy organizes classes and training sessions to teach citizens basic to advanced survival and medical skills. While Taiwanese men receive weapons and other training during mandatory military service, Kuma provides training and education for critical civilian activities adjacent to military operations during a national emergency.
Taiwan AI Labs – founded by Ethan Tu, a pioneering technologist in Silicon Valley and a good friend of SCSP’s – is building a series of AI-powered tools to enhance delivery of public services in Taiwan. It also has built an AI-powered platform – www.infodemic.cc – that automates the tracking of disinformation narratives from PRC and Russian trolls.
This is just a tiny sample of the work that civil society in Taiwan is engaging in, but a big signal of how the Taiwanese people understand the scope and scale of the challenge they face from the PRC and the steps they are taking to meet these challenges, alongside government action.
From Europe, to the Middle East, and to Asia: The Axis of Disruptors
As our group discussed the situation facing Taiwan, we quickly seized on the connections across the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, and a potential cross-strait conflict. The 2+ years of Russia’s full-scale failed, but continuing, invasion of Ukraine has provided endless analysis on the implications for Taiwan. The most recent news of the PRC enabling the production of Russian weapons inside China is just another indication of the direct consequences Ukraine may hold for Taiwan. And as Israel marks one year since the most devastating terrorist attack in its history, there are reports of Israel attacking Iranian delivery of weapons to its proxies via Russian-controlled airbases in Syria. And we are increasingly seeing how the PRC is helping to sow chaos out of this horrific event through its disinformation platforms. Our friends at Taiwan AI Labs demonstrated the surge in anti-Israel, pro-Hamas, and pro-Hezbollah narratives coming from PRC troll farms, stoking divisions in the United States and elsewhere.
As SCSP wrote in our May “Vision for Competitiveness” report, the growing cooperation across an Axis of Disruptors, including the PRC, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and their proxies, poses a real threat to the United States, our allies and partners, and the global order as we know it. It is not rocket science that, if Russia achieves political acquiescence from the United States and Europe to its military successes in Ukraine – with the assistance of the PRC’s industrial might and Iranian and North Korean weapon systems – then the likelihood of conflict in Taiwan dramatically increases.
This direct line from the conflict in Europe to a potential conflict in Asia requires the transatlantic alliance to reaffirm our resolve to push back Putin’s invasion, so we do not get drawn in to another conflict that may have greater economic consequences for the world, let alone add to the toll of human suffering from the existing conflicts. At the same time, we must also bolster our efforts to prepare our partners in the Indo-Pacific region to strengthen their ability to deter risks of escalation by the PRC.
Lessons Learned from Ukraine
As Typhoon Krathon weakened, our delegation was able to see President Lai Ching-te, Vice President Hsiao Bi-Khim, former President Tsai Ing-Wen, other senior national security leaders, and also leaders from the opposition Kuomintang party.
With members of our delegation experts on the situation in Russia-Ukraine and the Middle East, our discussions with Taiwanese leaders inevitably veered into the latest state of play, expectations for the future, and implications for Taiwan. While preserving the integrity and confidentiality of these discussions, I offer two lessons from Ukraine:
1. The United States and its allies and partners must assert strategic confidence in pushing back the aggressive behavior of our adversaries.
Despite the “exquisite” intelligence that allowed the United States to “prebunk” Putin’s invasion plans, we sometimes forget that this intelligence success was paired with an intelligence failure, where it was expected that Russian invaders may be able to reach Kyiv in one to four days. Instead, the incredible bravery and entrepreneurial spirit of the Ukrainian people – and the asymmetric capabilities they employed on the battlefield – allowed them to keep the numerically superior Russians at bay.
This intelligence failure led Ukraine’s allies to evacuate its diplomatic staff from the country in the days before the invasion. Had we instead provided more security assistance or other support to stand by Ukraine, the Ukrainians may have been able to deal a heavier defensive blow against the Russian invasion or the possibility of conflict may have been pushed further into the future, as Russia saw greater solidarity with Ukraine amongst the Transatlantic alliance.
2. Autonomy and autonomous systems are transforming warfare, and will provide an asymmetry that will level the playing field between smaller versus bigger countries.
SCSP has already written much on this topic.
The proliferation of drones in Ukraine has also been well documented. SCSP’s contacts in the drone industry, operating in Ukraine, have suggested that as many as 100,000 drones are now being used and attritted every month, and President Zelenskyy recently stated that Ukraine is now capable of producing as many as four million drones annually. Ukraine has become a war of attrition that harkens back to early 20th century trench warfare, where armies battle for incremental gains across the line of control. And with limited manpower on both sides, the side that can better leverage autonomous systems can gain a decisive edge.
This has not been lost on the United States, as there was an uncrewed aerial systems (UAS) and counter-UAS (C-UAS) business development trade mission to Taiwan shortly before our delegation’s trip. More will need to be done to build out the supply chain ecosystem to massively scale up the production of not just high-end UAS, but more importantly the low-end, cheap, expendable first-person video drones that currently dominate social media reporting of the conflict in Ukraine.
Dumplings Can Solve Most Problems
Despite the seriousness of the situation Taiwan faces, including constant violations of its territorial boundaries by air and sea (which the PRC reportedly halted for a few days given the approach of the typhoon), the Taiwanese people have found a way to enjoy life to its fullest. Almost universally, visitors remark on the incredibly warm and welcoming community they encounter on the island, and their acceptance into Taiwanese society not as visitors or expats, but as part of the family.
For those who have not yet had the fortune of visiting the island, you will find not only great friendship, but also great food – especially the world-renowned dumplings and xiao long bao at Din Tai Fung, as well as amazing beef noodle soup!
Next week, stay tuned for the second part of this newsletter series, which will highlight our team’s onward travel to the Philippines, as well as our return to Taiwan for another set of engagements.
🎤 Exciting Announcements
We are excited to share that Machina Labs and Divergent will be part of the Innovation Demos at our upcoming #AIRoboticsSummit24 on October 23rd in Washington, DC. Sign up for our waitlist here!
The Director of the Defense Innovation Unit, Doug Beck, and the President and CEO of In-Q-Tel, Steve Bowsher will also be joining us at The Ash Carter Exchange in Boston, MA on November 1st. Join the waitlist here!
SCSP x AGI House Hackathon: SCSP is partnering with the Bay Area AI hacker house, AGI House, to host an AI Agents for Gov Hackathon @SCSP’s office in DC! Come create the future of AI agents to solve important real-world challenges. Request attendance here.