The administration of US President Donald Trump should “support Taiwan’s development of strong satellite communications” in low Earth orbit, two academics wrote in an article published in Foreign Affairs on Thursday.
Daniel Byman, a professor at the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, and Seth Jones, a former US Department of Defense official, made the call in an article titled “How to Toughen Up Taiwan — America Must Help the Island Deal With China’s Gray Zone Tactics.”
Jones is the senior vice president and Harold Brown Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. His research focuses on international security, warfare, irregular threats and terrorism, his Foreign Affairs description says.
Photo: CNA
Taiwan’s telecommunications infrastructure is vulnerable to “subversion,” the academics said.
They cited two events as examples.
In February 2023, two Chinese merchant vessels cut undersea cables connecting Taiwan proper to Lienchiang County, disrupting Internet communications, they said.
“This January, a Chinese-linked cargo vessel damaged another undersea fiber-optic cable — one of only 14 such cables linking Taiwan to the rest of the world,” they said.
Taiwan relies on European satellite operator Eutelsat OneWeb for low Earth-orbit satellite services and backup microwave communications, but the operator lacks sufficient bandwidth to be a substitute for Taiwan’s fiber-optic cables, Byman and Jones wrote.
Taiwan needs a powerful satellite service to reduce its reliance on undersea cable networks, they said, suggesting that Taiwan collaborate with Amazon.com’s Project Kuiper broadband Internet satellite constellation.
“Taiwanese leaders are already in discussions with Kuiper, but they need to move toward a deal more quickly, and Kuiper needs to increase its satellite launches in” low Earth orbit, they said.
Taiwan should work with US cloud services such as Google, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services to store backups of critical data, they said.
While it is understandable that governments prefer to buy local, important data are more vulnerable to China’s cyberattacks, espionage, physical destruction or other attacks if it is all stored by Taiwanese firms, Byman and Jones wrote.
The article also urged Taipei to issue more urgent warnings about Beijing’s aggressive actions, with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army having “engaged in a conspicuous military buildup and ramped up its cable-cutting, cyberattacks, air and naval encroachments, and military exercises, including a simulated blockade of Taiwan.”
The authors acknowledged that there might be concerns about spooking Taiwanese by stating the extent of China’s threat, but suggested that Taiwan set up a public data-driven communications platform that sends regular alerts about Chinese actions on or near Taiwan.
Such a system could help foster “public dialogue ... [and] give citizens tools to discern between actual threats and misinformation,” they said.
“Taiwan should develop a more unified strategic communications campaign across its government ministries to ensure that consistent messages about the threat level are communicated to the Taiwanese people,” they said.
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