Fifteen years ago, when I was still an undergraduate student, a professor teaching international law made a remark that has stayed with me ever since. “If a term is used everywhere, but means something different in every context, then eventually it means nothing at all.”
At the time, he was discussing piracy. Of course, the word means something to all of us, and in many contexts, it requires no further explanation. Yet depending on whether one approached the issue from maritime law, intellectual property, software development or business, it could refer to different things. Back then, I did not think much about his observation. However, these days it beginning to feel increasingly relevant.
In recent months, one word has come to dominate discussions in Taiwan’s policy, academic and think-tank circles: Resilience.
Attend almost any conference, seminar or panel discussion related to national security, technology, energy or defense, and the term appears prominently in the title. During the past two weeks alone, I attended five different events at which resilience was presented as a central theme. Most focused on familiar topics such as industrial capacity, defense supply chains, critical infrastructure protection and, increasingly, artificial intelligence.
One event stood out. Organized by the European Values Center for Security Policy and based on a recent East Asia regional crisis simulation conducted by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, it examined Taiwan’s resilience within a broader regional contingency. The findings themselves were not particularly surprising. Like many previous studies, the exercise highlighted vulnerabilities in areas ranging from energy and communications to logistics and critical infrastructure.
What was noteworthy was its emphasis on people.
Too often, resilience is discussed in terms of facilities, networks and technology. These are undoubtedly important. However, efforts focused solely on protecting infrastructure risk, leaving resilience only half complete. At its core, resilience is not merely about ensuring that systems continue functioning during a crisis. It is also about ensuring that people can adapt, cooperate and recover. In that sense, the human dimension might be the most important component of resilience.
Taiwan has taken meaningful steps to strengthen preparedness through the Whole-of-Society Defense Resilience Committee. Yet a key question remains is who is included in “whole of society”? More than 800,000 migrant workers from Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam support critical sectors, including manufacturing and technology. Despite their contributions, they are often overlooked in resilience planning. non-governmental organizations help bridge communication gaps, but true resilience requires institutions to engage directly with everyone affected during a crisis.
This challenge is particularly visible in emergency communication. Taiwan’s civil defense handbook In Case of Crisis was published in Mandarin and English. Including English was an important and welcome step, but it does not fully reflect the linguistic realities of Taiwan’s foreign workforce. Producing online versions in Bahasa Indonesia, Tagalog and Vietnamese would require relatively limited resources while significantly expanding accessibility.
Taiwan has shown that multilingual communication works, with convenience stores, banks and other services increasingly providing information in migrant workers’ languages. Extending this approach to emergency preparedness would improve access and strengthen trust.
The simulation highlighted the importance of people in resilience. While discussions often focus on infrastructure, energy, supply chains and technology, crises are ultimately experienced by individuals.
A society’s ability to withstand shocks depends not only on physical systems, but also on whether people feel informed, included and prepared to respond.
Ultimately, resilience is not only measured by the strength of infrastructure, the size of stockpiles or the sophistication of technology.
It is also measured by whether people understand what is happening, know what to do and feel included in the institutions designed to protect them. When communication is clear, cooperation becomes easier. When people feel excluded, resilience becomes harder to achieve.
If resilience is to remain more than just another frequently repeated buzzword, Taiwan’s discussion of the concept should pay as much attention to the people who make society function as it does to the systems that support it.
Harun Talha Ayanoglu is a visiting research fellow at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research.
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