Vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) on Wednesday called for support from the US Congress and business leaders for Taiwan’s inclusion in the US defense supply chain.
“I seek your support for Taiwan’s inclusion in the DoD [US Department of Defense] NDIS [National Defense Industrial Strategy] international collaboration mechanisms, such as SOSA, security of supply arrangements,” Hsiao said in a prerecorded video at the Hill and Valley Forum in Washington.
While Taiwan is striving to uphold the values of democracy and freedom, it is facing daily challenges to its cyberspace, information technology and telecommunications infrastructure, maritime and airspace, she said.
Photo: screen grab from YouTube
The peace and security of Taiwan “is essential to global prosperity” as the nation is an “irreplaceable and indispensable contributor to global technology advancements,” Hsiao said.
She called on public and private stakeholders around the world to work together to ensure that “peace and prosperity prevail.”
Hsiao said that the current US defense industry base is producing “neither enough nor on time” the hardware to meet global demand.
The US Department of Defense in January published the National Defense Industrial Strategy to guide the improvement and the modernization of the US defense industrial base ecosystem “so it delivers at speed and scale for our war fighters,” US Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks said at the time.
The strategy underlined the importance of international collaboration, Hsiao said.
“I believe this is where a Taiwan partnership with the United States is not only a force multiplier, but an absolute necessity,” she said.
She proposed an integrated collaboration or coproduction scheme that leverages Taiwan’s advantages in hardware manufacturing and the US strength in security technologies to “add resilience and efficiency to our defense supply chains.”
“Together we can manufacture nearly anything as efficiently and reliably as anyone in the world,” Hsiao said.
The forum is dedicated to “harnessing the power of technology to address America’s most pressing national security challenges,” according to its Web site.
Hsiao said that she hoped the forum would help foster “an even closer Taiwan-US partnership in the realm of technology and national security.”
Asked about Hsiao’s speech, Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) yesterday told reporters at the legislature in Taipei that integrating Taiwanese and US industries would be “highly beneficial to both parties.”
Taiwan’s defense industry has a strong foundation and other relevant industries are also well-developed, he said.
Joining the US defense supply chain would not only be a good thing for Taiwanese industries and national defense, but also for the nation’s allies and partners, Wu said.
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