Taiwan is an excellent partner for Australia on cybersecurity issues, Australian Ambassador for Cyber Affairs and Critical Technology Brendan Dowling said on Monday.
Dowling made the remarks during the Sydney Dialogue, an annual policy summit hosted by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
This year, a Taiwanese delegation led by National Security Council adviser Lee Yuh-jye (李育杰) attended the event focusing on cybersecurity and emerging technology issues.
Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
The summit featured industry experts, government officials and academics from 30 countries — including Taiwan, Australia, Japan, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Singapore, Tonga, the UK and the US. Discussions centered on topics such as artificial intelligence (AI) development, hybrid threat management, digital infrastructure in the Indo-Pacific region, economic resilience, digital innovation, democracy and disinformation.
As part of a session on designing technology for democracy, Lee and Dowling had an in-depth conversation on Taiwan’s position in AI supply chains and how to use technology to protect democracies from threats such as disinformation.
Dowling called Taiwan an excellent partner for Australia when it comes to cybersecurity issues due to its democracy, as well as its insistence that “cybersecurity is national security” amid a tense geopolitical environment.
Lee said that although The Economist has called Taiwan the “most dangerous place on Earth,” the country’s democracy has become more resilient in the face of wide-ranging threats, from natural disasters to incessant cyberattacks.
He also discussed how Taiwan’s tech industry prioritizes human rights in real-world applications, such as how social distancing apps deployed during the COVID-19 pandemic sought to protect user privacy.
Taiwan is also a vital link in AI, with key industry players such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co and Quanta Computer Inc, he said, adding that “Taiwan” cannot be spelled without “AI.”
Every country needs its own AI infrastructure, and cannot rely on others, Lee said, citing ChatGPT’s use of simplified Chinese characters and Baidu’s Ernie Bot as potential national security risks to Taiwan.
China could use AI programs to better understand Taiwan or leverage algorithms to influence Taiwanese society, he said.
Taiwan has developed its own large-scale language model, the Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine, he said.
To achieve AI sovereignty, Taiwan would continue to promote educational and technological initiatives, increasing its democratic resilience, he said.
Representative to Australia Douglas Hsu (徐佑典), Ministry of Digital Affairs Deputy Director for Cyber Security Cheng Shin-ming (鄭欣明), National Institute of Cyber Security Vice President Lin Ying-dar (林盈達) and Director of Cybersecurity Technology at the Institute for Information Industry Mattel Hsu (許建榮) also attended.
Taipei on Thursday held urban resilience air raid drills, with residents in one of the exercises’ three “key verification zones” reporting little to no difference compared with previous years, despite government pledges of stricter enforcement. Formerly known as the Wanan exercise, the air raid drills, which concluded yesterday, are now part of the “Urban Resilience Exercise,” which also incorporates the Minan disaster prevention and rescue exercise. In Taipei, the designated key verification zones — where the government said more stringent measures would be enforced — were Songshan (松山), Zhongshan (中山) and Zhongzheng (中正) districts. Air raid sirens sounded at 1:30pm, signaling the
The number of people who reported a same-sex spouse on their income tax increased 1.5-fold from 2020 to 2023, while the overall proportion of taxpayers reporting a spouse decreased by 4.4 percent from 2014 to 2023, Ministry of Finance data showed yesterday. The number of people reporting a spouse on their income tax trended upward from 2014 to 2019, the Department of Statistics said. However, the number decreased in 2020 and 2021, likely due to a drop in marriages during the COVID-19 pandemic and the income of some households falling below the taxable threshold, it said. The number of spousal tax filings rebounded
A saleswoman, surnamed Chen (陳), earlier this month was handed an 18-month prison term for embezzling more than 2,000 pairs of shoes while working at a department store in Tainan. The Tainan District Court convicted Chen of embezzlement in a ruling on July 7, sentencing her to prison for illegally profiting NT$7.32 million (US$248,929) at the expense of her employer. Chen was also given the opportunity to reach a financial settlement, but she declined. Chen was responsible for the sales counter of Nike shoes at Tainan’s Shinkong Mitsukoshi Zhongshan branch, where she had been employed since October 2019. She had previously worked
Labor rights groups yesterday called on the Ministry of Labor to protect migrant workers in Taiwan’s fishing industry, days after CNN reported alleged far-ranging abuses in the sector, including deaths and forced work. The ministry must enforce domestic labor protection laws on Taiwan-owned deep-sea fishing vessels, the Coalition for Human Rights for Migrant Fishers told a news conference outside the ministry in Taipei after presenting a petition to officials. CNN on Sunday reported that Taiwanese seafood giant FCF Co, the owners of the US-based Bumble Bee Foods, committed human rights abuses against migrant fishers, citing Indonesian migrant fishers. The alleged abuses included denying
RSS