Warfare in the past century has gone through several transformations. In the first half of the 20th century, hard power was the predominant mode of war. Following World War II, soft power became preferred, as it is less destructive and ultimately a more effective mode of furthering a nation’s interests.
These methods were complementary, with soft power sometimes backed up by the threat of hard power. However, the nature of warfare is changing again with technological advances and investment in specialist agencies.
The age of cyberpower is upon us. Cyberwarfare entails using computer technology to disrupt and disable the operation and systems of a nation or an organization for strategic or military purposes.
Evidence of this has been seen over the past year with the much-reported suspicions of Russian interference in last year’s US presidential elections.
The US is certainly not above using cybertactics itself, as it did in the US-Israeli Stuxnet project, which reportedly destroyed 20 percent of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges in 2013 by causing them to spin out of control through cyberinterference.
In the past decade, China has allocated much of its annual budget to military advancement, upgrading and expansion. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is already a formidable, modern military machine with ample resources. Few would contend that China would win a military war against the US military, but the PLA does have the advantage in certain theaters, especially in China’s backyard and especially when the objective is gains achievable within a relatively short space of time — and Beijing is well aware of the importance of cyberwarfare.
“Outer space and cyberspace have become new commanding heights in strategic competition among all parties,” China’s Information Office of the State Council said in a 2015 report titled China’s Military Strategy.
The PLA has had quite a long time to develop its capabilities: According to US think tank Rand Corporation, China has maintained organized cyberunits since at least the late 1990s.
Even though China might not be ready to fully incorporate a cyberwarfare component in an attack on Taiwan, you can bet it is working hard on it.
China would be “more than capable of launching a militarily disabling cyberattack on Taiwan” by 2030, University of New South Wales cybersecurity expert Greg Austin has said.
Taiwan can buy all the weaponry it wants from the US to defend itself from a PLA attack, but advanced equipment relies on coordination, communications systems, access rights, protocols, GPS data and all forms of integrated systems to work in a coordinated effort, or indeed to work at all, and could thus be disabled by cyberinterference.
As senior military analyst Omar Lamrani pointed out last year, the US’ technological advantage might even turn out to be an Achilles’ heel in the event of a sophisticated cyberattack by China.
Lamrani warned that the US relies on satellites for navigation, intelligence collection, precision targeting, communication and early warning activities that China, certainly at this point, does not.
Beijing can rely on ground-based radars and sensors to help it in a Taiwan Strait conflict, he said.
The government is trying to push its Forward-looking Infrastructure Development Program budget through the legislature. Digital infrastructure, for which it has allocated NT$46.1 billion (US$1.52 billion) for the first four years, is one of the five major pillars of that plan, and it includes Internet security.
One would hope that this is only part of a major push by the government and the Ministry of National Defense to ensure that the nation’s Internet security is robust. If it is not, Taiwan could find itself at more of a disadvantage if it puts all its hopes on hard power when Beijing comes calling.
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