Taiwan must enlarge its reserve forces with people with information security skills or begin attracting talent to establish a “civil cyberwarrior” program to help counter Chinese threats online, an academic said.
Tzeng Yi-suo (曾怡碩), an assistant research fellow at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, suggested the new program in an article titled “Civil Cyber Warriors: A Path that Taiwan Can Take” that was published by the institute on Wednesday.
Reserve forces who specialize in information warfare are not numerous enough, Tzeng said, citing a report by the Legislative Yuan’s Organic Laws and Statutes Bureau that criticized a voluntary short-term recall service program initiated in 2018 for allocating too little funding — NT$650,000 at the time of the report.
The 2018 program is part of the Ministry of National Defense’s effort to reduce standing force upkeep while maintaining a robust reservist force.
Tzeng criticized this year’s recruitment drive, as it only aimed to hire seven people with technical specialty backgrounds.
As the government encourages the development of information security enterprises, Tzeng said that there should be a significant number of individuals with the required backgrounds in the nation who could serve in the reservist force.
Tzeng said that the ministry should also inquire the number of individuals who had no experience or specialization in cyberwarfare when joining the military, but had started jobs related to information security after leaving.
Regarding a ban on travel to China for those who participated in the reservist program — which could decrease their chances of being hired — Tzeng said that the ministry should offer incentives to individuals and companies.
These incentive could include collaborative projects, tax deductions or wage subsidies, Tzeng said.
We must encourage individuals with high-tech backgrounds to participate in military efforts and contribute their knowledge to combating Internet threats from abroad, he added.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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