I’m here for the World Movement for Democracy conference and wanted to go to Penghu Island…
Oh, excellent.
…for an excursion on Saturday. I’m very excited about that.
I’ll be sure to say “islands” of resilience then. [laughs]
This is my first time back in Taiwan since April, 2019. Before the pandemic.
I was in DC, March 2020.
Oh, wow.
Spreading the news about why mask is important.
Some people got the message. Not everybody. About how much time do we have?
An hour. An hour and a half if you want to go into details.
Let’s see how we do. Let’s play it by and…
Do you have other pressing meetings?
No, not really.
We can take our time then.
Excellent. Thank you. Is it OK if we start on the record?
Sure. Of course.
Excellent. Wonderful. If you want to go off the record at any time, you can just let me know. It’s up to you.
We have something like three recorders here, right?
It’s called hyper redundancy.
I know. Resilience.
Exactly. Digital resilience. Wonderful. Thank you so much for taking the time to meet today.
When I told my bosses at the Washington Post that I was coming to interview the head of the Ministry of Digital Affairs, they said, “What’s the Ministry of Digital Affairs? What is that?” I said, “To be honest, that’s why I’m doing the interview to find out.”
Let me just start with a basic question of what is the Ministry of Digital Affairs? Why did you start it? Why you? Why was it created? What is its mission?
Sure. The mission, very simply put, is to provide digital resilience for all. We have this slogan called “Free the Future.”
We sincerely believe that it is a top priority to adapt from the adversities: Cyberattack, disinformation crisis, the pandemic too. These crises have promoted a renewed interagency collaboration with a sense of urgency during the past three years or so, that unites what was previously different units within five different ministries and offices, to work in a weekly, or even hourly, interval, very closely together.
Among which are — for example — the part of the National Communication Commission that handles non-geostationary orbit sattelites that are deployed like in Ukraine. Also the part of the National Development Council that specialize in data governance, and real time open data like the mask rationing map…
Like what?
The mask rationing map. The map that the civic tech people built to display the real time inventory of the mask.
Oh, interesting.
The thing I shared in DC.
Got it.
More different applications to make sure that people get first the mask, and then the rapid testing, and of course preregistering vaccination they’re delivered not through a top down digital service, but by the people building more than 100 different applications to fit the needs of various different groups.
How did that work out?
Very well. That’s what enabled us to go almost a year without a single infection. That’s what enabled people to… As another example, we publish this real time open data on people’s preference for the vaccination, pre-registration for vaccines of different brands.
People who don’t like AstraZeneca for example, nevertheless see that there’s these people in this age bracket referring it. We had turned what, in other jurisdictions, a vaccine and vax polarization into a healthy competition between I don’t know, football or play basketball, like one of your four favorite teams in a league or something like that.
It drove the vaccination rate very high because people end up having one favorite and saying the other three are back. Nevertheless, they’re proud to support the team. Team BNT, Team Moderna, or…
Who won?
I’m sorry. Which vaccine won?
Early on, Moderna was much preferred over AstraZeneca. Later on, BNT also gained a lot of ground. Still to this day, Moderna is the go to choice for most people.
That’s the one I got.
Excellent.
That makes me feel better about my choice.
Part of the winning team.
How does that serve to fight the disinformation about the vax? How are you able to minimize the impact of anti-vax?
Yeah. It’s called “humor over rumor”. right? It enabled us to turn what could be a damaging message, disinformation based on outrage or hate really, or conspiracy theories into something that is fun, that is humorous.
For example, we had a very cute spokesdog of the CECC, 總柴 the Shiba Inu, a very cute dog that put their foot to their mouth and in a very cute way. A poster says, “Wear a mask to protect your own face against your own dirty hands.”
Instead of arguing about the level of mask required, aerosol transmission, or whatever, the cute dog states the very obvious that a mask is there to protect you against your own dirty hands. First it links hesitation and mask use together. Second, it’s not a high science, expert thing that people can feel a distance away.
Everybody can verify that mask is there to protect your own hands against your own face and themselves. It’s very close to the people. Once people share it and laugh about it, the next time they saw, for example, I don’t know… “5G antenna are embedded in masks” or something, they don’t share it anymore because they already have the antibodies of the mind, so to speak. It’s like a viral vaccine.
Interesting. That was a little bit of a diversion, but let me get back…
That’s fine.
…to the ministry. You’ve been open for two months?
Yeah. Since late August.
How has that gone so far?
Very well. People generally like the fact that for example, this non-geostationary satellite thing that connects to 5G mobile deployments. Previously that would have required three ministers and two ministers without the portfolio, five cabinet level people in total, to all say yes in order for that to happen.
It’s a lot of work internally to coordinate. We work quite well together, it’s just scheduling takes a lot of time. Nowadays, because as I mentioned, the part of NCC, that the spectrum allocation is in moda, the part of MOEA, Ministry of Economic Affairs that does 5G development is in moda. The part of the Department of Cyber Security that oversees the cyberdefence of critical infrastructures is in moda. The part of the NDC that plans data governance, is in moda.
These agencies used to have to ask their ministries for approval. Now it’s like five of us on this table saying OK and is a go. The businesses and the civil society have witnessed a lot more agility, faster turnaround, when it comes to things like that.
That example of 5G mobile? Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Sure. Very simply put, we’re going to deploy at least 700 satellite receivers, non geostationary orbit satellite ground stations. Many of them will be connected to the 5G towers. Those 5G towers may be mobile on cars, boats, or whatever.
That’s when earthquake, typhoon, or anything happens that disrupts the communication, we can very quickly deploy alternate connectivity that’s not submarine cables to these places so that people can still keep the communication open, and even have a live video to the places under impact.
This is digital resilience?
Yes. This is this sort of resilience and it requires, as I mentioned, four different agencies work very closely together.
This is also useful in the case of a military contingency?
Very large earthquakes, yes. Multiple very large earthquakes.
When we look at — you’re wearing your Ukraine shirt — and when we look at what’s happening in Ukraine, digital resiliency is a massive issue as they struggle for their survival, for their freedom?
Is this born out of a recognition of how the Ukrainians have…?
Indeed. In the Ukrainian case, I remember very early on, staying up at night trying to read, I think it was the Kiev Independent. Journalists on the ground reporting what was actually happening in Kiev. There’s a lot of disinformation going around at a time, for example saying Zelenskyy has already escaped.
Then we also saw “I need ammo, not a ride” and other very useful memes coming in from the Kiev side. If they don’t have broadband connection, and they can only post textual tweets — but the disinformation sites has real-time feeds, deep fakes, or whatever — then that’s not going to work. It will resemble Crimea.
Because Kiev has been able to keep video links open and Zelenskyy was able to talk to journalists over the world with video link, the appetite for information is fulfilled by actual journalists doing actual journalistic work.
Well, a lot of international correspondents are in Taiwan now. If we don’t provide them with a broadband link in the event of the disaster — natural or unnatural — then of course, the disinformation will win the war.
I agree with all that, but it’s also become a critical military technology for keeping there. Is that part of the vision that you are building with this program?
Yeah. The military side is not my purview. It’s the ICEFCOM, part of the ROC Armed Forces. For our side, we keep the satellite links open. In the event that you described, of course we will share the bandwidth of nonstationary orbit satellites to the military.
The military already have certain capabilities already. We’re doing this to — as I mentioned — improve resilience for all. Certainly for journalists, but for people doing rescue work like medical work, things like that.
I understand that it’s sensitive to talk about a possible military contingency, but let me try anyway.
Go ahead.
Because this is one of the benefits of me coming all the way here, is that to share a little bit about the discussion about Taiwan that’s going on in Washington, and feed that back into the discussion of what’s going here.
It’s important for me to tell you a little bit about the discussion that’s going on in Washington regarding Taiwan. Right now the number one discussion is over a Starlink. Because there’s a huge debate going on of the fact that the Ukrainian side in Ukrainian military is so dependent on Starlink.
When I hear you talk about digital resiliency, I’m wondering, what is your view of the fact that Ukraine is so dependent on the system? Is this part of the thinking to create an alternative to that sort of…
The mobile 5G station linked to nongeostationary satellite is not in the future tense. Our deputy minister Herming Chiueh has been working with the NDC, with the fire service of HsinChu to deploy exactly that. That they work with SES, which is in mid-Earth orbit. The latency is slightly higher, like a hundred millisecond.
Bandwidth is actually plenty, like 50 megabits bidirectionally. We’re planning to work with multiple vendors. We’re already working with mid-Earth-orbit vendors.
Does that capability exist now or is that…?
Yes. It is already deployed in fire service in Hsinchu.
In where? I’m sorry?
In Hsinchu City.
I see. Is the plan to take it nationwide then?
Yeah. Pegatron, which supports the hardware side in the 5G O-RAN, and Microsoft which supports the software system both said that their system is modular. In a sense that they can work simultaneously with multiple vendors. With that capability, it’s much easier than to scale it to the entire country.
Is the Taiwanese government interested in bringing Starlink capability to Taiwan? Is that something that…?
For the commercial use? Around November, we’ll announce this application process until end of the year for non-geostationary orbit vendors. There’s actually multiple, so not just Starlink, for them to start commercial operation.
The 700 proof of concept sites is quite different because this is not a business operation. We actually fund, I think it’s around US $15 million over the next two years, to cover this operation cost. This is not about granting a license for satellite vendors to do business with 2B or 2C customers. Not like the iPhone satellite thing, rather something that we need for our own needs.
Both tracks are going simultaneously, so there will be an application process.
To broaden it out, what is the concept of digital resilience that you’re pursuing? Do you have a popular buy-in for this amongst the…?
Oh yeah, definitely. Resilience in general refers to ability to recover quickly, turn adversity into responses immediately through improved mechanisms, so that we can learn from experience and strengthen ourselves.
I would say even before moda officially started because of the cyber attacks and disinformation attacks following Speaker Pelosi’s visits earlier August, all parties, all four major parties in the parliament made it very clear that this is the thing that moda must answer, too.
No matter what other work we’re doing like in semiconductor, cybersecurity, and so on, these are all very important. However, to learn from that attack and not let the same denial of service, disinformation attack gain foothold, again, that become like our number one priority even before moda officially formed.
What are the lessons from that attack? What did that attack teach us that previously we didn’t know?
For example, usually in cybersecurity we focus on protecting confidentiality and integrity. These were not harmed immediate following Pelosi’s visit. However, the attack was on the availability. Meaning that the Ministry of National Defense, or Presidential Office was not harmed, but their websites were subject to DDoS.
People abroad, for example, cannot connect to these websites for half an hour, for an hour, and so on. During those kind of outage, disinformation attack begins. That says that the black hats have successfully infiltrated the President’s Office and so on, which is not true.
When people want to check the official statement from the Presidential Office, the website was not aligned. These two combined the address. Another example is that in one of the rail stations there was a large billboard displaying commercial advertisement.
It’s not linked to the train system at all. It’s not even used to display the timetable. It’s just a commercial advertisement billboard. Then there was a successful infiltration that turned that billboard into saying something bad about Pelosi’s visit.
That’s a cybersecurity attack that doesn’t actually gain any foothold into the critical infrastructure. At the same time, there’s a disinformation attack that says the black hats have taken over the rails system.
A very low-tech cyber attack with very minimal damage can be amplified in a kind of cognitive warfare, hybrid warfare through disinformation attacks. That is the new vector that we learned. For the website, we countered again through humor over rumor, saying the minute the drill started, we published moda.gov.tw, the new Ministry’s website online. It’s backed by the interplanetary file system, the same system that powers the NFT storage of the Bored Apes. We welcome everyone to attack our website… and through that, people learned that dialing into a line to keep it busy isn’t the same as taking over the command center. It’s not the same.
We’re able to respond very quickly and calm people really, to make sure that people understand that it’s a separate attack but it’s not distortive whenever you read all of this disinformation. The response was quick, but of course all the major parties in the parliament would like this not happen again.
Even if it happened again, though, people are already educated or vaccinated around this kind of…
Immunized.
Yeah. Immunized.
Do you think this is an evolution of the tactics of the Chinese government and how they use cyber attacks from disruption, to cognitive warfare, and influence?
Yeah. Disinformation, unlikes hard cyberattacks, used to be very different lines of attack. In the events following Speaker Pelosi’s visit, we’ve seen these two working very closely together, almost intertwined.
When you think about cognitive warfare, that also comes through legal means of media and social media, and is one of your areas of interest and responsibility to influence operations, digital influence operations, that may be on TikTok, or may be on Facebook, or may be on Instagram. Is that part of…?
Anywhere, really.
How do you think about the challenge of cognitive warfare and social media platforms?
Again, I think the point here is to build preexisting networks of trust between people and journalism. I say journalism, not journalists, because I believe in civic journalism. People who learn about fact checking about checking your sources, about the right framing and so on, who can be a trusted party that is not affected by this partisan fight.
For example, one example during the 2020 January election for presidents, during the voting, there was a disinformation that says “the CIA provides invisible ink. No matter who you vote for, that vote will disappear and Tsai Ing-wen will gain votes thanks to thouse invisible markers.”
I wish the CIA was so capable…
Now, if you only have the…
It’s a joke by the way.
…I know.
The point I’m making is that of course accusations of election fraud and so on is very common. This is really a new one because it cites the so-called evidence of there’s a number four vote — because there were only three candidates in the presidency election, that vote can only be by invisible ink in the column or something. It’s all very complex. I don’t pretend to understand the conspiracy theories.
The point I’m making is it’s debunked collaboratively by the YouTubers in both the opposition and the ruling parties witnessing the counting process, because we allow filming during the counting process. There’s multiple mobile phones filming from multiple angles in a close enough distance that collectively was proved to be their respective party viewers that like this conspiracy theory had no ground.
The so-called fourth candidate is actually the legislatures ticket with some different color. It was debunked very quickly in a joint effort that collaborates even across diversity. You see, these people don’t often talk friendly to each other at the height of the election, but nevertheless, they are YouTubers, people with journalistic training work together to dispel this rumor.
I’m just trying to apply that to our own conspiracy theories about election fraud, and I can’t imagine a situation where Republicans and Democrats will work together to debunk information. It assumes that the two parties have a shared interest in doing that, but what if that doesn’t exist?
In our country, there’s no agreement on, you could have the two cameras pointed at the same election worker, and each party would have a completely different reading of the reality of that situation. In fact, that’s what happened. What are we supposed to do in that situation?
Well, that’s a very good question. I often get asked that question. It’s like saying, the symptom is so severe, we’re already at a community spread and we don’t have a vaccine. We don’t even have the cure. What else can we do but locking down? I really compare the more hard-line of counter disinformation — saying disinformation had spiraled out of control — to the pandemic lockdowns.
It’s important to say that it’s a threat and we need to unite in fighting it. Taking a more hard-line approach like disinformation governance is like a forced response. The SARS was so bad in Taiwan in 2003 where we had to lockdown people in a hospital. It’s, of course, a hard-line position that’s barely constitutional; people didn’t like it at all. It was traumatic, which is why immediately after SARS recovering from the trauma of having to do some borderline constitutional efforts, we designed the CECC. We ensured that we have good quarantine rules. We have the mask rationing capability and so on, so that the next time when COVID-19 came, we can fight it without a single day of lockdown. It’s always important to prepare ourselves after one major event.
Here we are, now the debate in Washington has become debatable on who gets to determine what is the…Who is the arbiter of disinformation?
Everyone, all citizens.
What if there’s no consensus at all, how does that affect people’s right to free speech? In other words, does the right to free speech include the right to spread disinformation?
The point I’m making is that when everyone can participate in fact checking, it doesn’t quite matter whether they always arrive to the fact 100 percent at the time, like whether they do this full investigative journalistic work.
Of course, that’s hard work and takes professionals, but when people participate even a little bit into the collective fact finding, they get in the mood that immunizes them from the radical conspiracy theories. It is the process that has this immunizing effect.
In Taiwan, for example, the primary schools, middle schools, they participate in fact checking the three presidential candidates as they go on their forum and debates. If they find something that Tsai Ing-wen said wrong factually, maybe their name even appear on the broadcast. That’s inoculating them against the more…
You have to institutionalize media literacy and information literacy.
Yes. Here we call it “competence” because literacy is when you read, competence is when you write.
That’s a big project.
Yeah, it is, it is. For lifelong education, people, even my parents, when they read possible disinformation on the line, platform, they learn to check the Cofacts, which is a g0v civil society project, like Wikipedia. To answer your question more directly, everyone can write their own fact-finding nuggets.
Now the most trending of disinformation is reported by people like spawn reporting on Cofact, but nobody is the arbiter. You see multiple inputs, and nobody can delete the other people. But because this place, Cofacts, is pro-social, not anti-social media, it doesn’t sell advertisement based on profiling in any way.
This is the place in which people learn about the act of collaborating across very different party affiliations and so on. Especially because they usually collaborate more mundane things like which fruit, which tea causes cancer, or things like that. Even across party differences, they can already learn to work together on the more food-and-drug issues.
When I hear you talk about this, I can’t help thinking that this is very much in line with the philosophy of flatten government, open source, civic engagement, the removing of bureaucracy and institutions from governance. It’s something that you’ve believed in for your whole life.
That’s what I’m here for.
If it’s OK, can I now go back and talk a little about your life and how you got here, because I think it’s an interesting story that informs this philosophy. It’s an unlikely story because you came from a world that was not for politics.
Indeed, before joining the cabinet in 2016, I was working with the Apple Siri team.
Can you tell my readers a little bit about your background? I understand that you come from a family that had a long history of service to this country. Your grandfathers both fought in WW2.
Yes. My mother’s father in the Army, and my father’s father in the Air Force; both are part of the ROCAF.
What did that history and that experience, how did that inform your — I don’t want to say nationalism — I want to say your commitment to service and also your philosophy about this country and what needs to be done to protect it.
My father’s mother — my grandma, almost 90 now, just met her yesterday — my other grandma is 97, also met her yesterday…
Wonderful.
My father’s mother came from Lukang and was educated of course under Japanese rule. She married freely to my grandpa, not the behest of her family, a couple years after the February 28th massacre. It was a unlikely collaboration in those times. Her family disowned her for a while. Of course, they made peace afterwards.
It’s a kind of microcosm of what happens when in the ‘40s the ROC government relocated to Taiwan. First it had to stand its ground of course, as I mentioned, defend against the expansionism. On the other hand, it also has to both literally learn different languages, different cultures, and also make peace — initially not successfully at all, but eventually, through democratization, to make sure that this diversity is treasured as a value.
I grew up speaking Holo, the Taiwanese Hokkien language, and then learned various other languages. Nowadays, we have 20 national languages. I translate the official name of our country, 中華民國, as “Transcultural Republic of Citizens” — This is not official at all, it’s purely personal.
Transcultural as in 中華 — in the middle between the various different cultures — and 民國 of course as citizens’ republic. Both are important like this trans-culturalism, this ability to work on food and drug fact checking despite the different ethnic and linguistic backgrounds.
The fact that we’re all in it together to further democracy, and through democratization we recognize the need for people in other corners of the globe that are also struggling. Presently because they’re liberal/democratic and we’re natural allies. That’s part of background. Of course in 2014 that all came to a head…
Sunflower Occupy.
…when Sunflower occupied the parliament. Non-violently, unlike in other advanced democracies. That’s when I learned that if we provide plenty of bandwidth, live broadcasting, to journalists actually doing journalistic work… Some are actually journalist students but journalists never the less, then it has a calming effect.
People don’t tend to diverge even when half a million people on the street and then more online, people tend to converge into something like a good enough consensus. The other departments, the head of department eventually say, let’s say OK to that.
You don’t see that in many occupies. Here, with plenty of bandwidth, live interaction, and good facilitation, this kind of collective intelligence can actually be formed. That’s another watershed moment for me.
Was that 2014, Sunflower movement?
Was that when you decided to become politically active?
Mm-hmm.
Was that when you decided to become a public figure and to become involved in the political and even the bureaucratic process?
Indeed. At the end of that year, Minister without Portfolio Jaclyn Tsai, came to our community, to a g0v hackathon to propose that we use the same facilitated deliberation way that we’ve deployed in March that year, in order to solve some very difficult problems — for example, Uber and so on.
At the time people registered their companies in Cayman Islands, and how to ensure good governance, how to adapt our Company Act, how to do crowdsource, or crowdfunding, and so on. All these are the things, all the legislatures around the world are grappling with.
This emerging technology is so fast. Our law doesn’t even make sense in these circumstance. How to do crowd law. How to make the law altogether. That’s when I become a reverse mentor to people younger than 35 to advise cabinet ministers. I worked with Jaclyn for a couple years.
I find it a little bit ironic that you are a conservative anarchist, and also managing a government bureaucracy. Is there a contradiction there?
Not at all. I’m working with the government, not for the government, and also I’m thoroughly non-partisan, not at all involving in the election process. You don’t see me coming to those mayoral election campaigns.
Everyone understand that I serve all the 17 SDG colors, not any particular party color. This is very well-known in Taiwan. In this, I’m very much like a kind of a senior bureaucrat, in a sense that no matter which ruling party is in place, I work to defend democracy.
This is important because the disinformation attack and so on that we just mentioned, is not about attacking particular projects, it’s trying to undermine people’s faith in the democratic process itself. They will support any faction, any party if it’s serves the need to make people doubt the democratic process, about their participation and so on. Something you have also seen in the US, right?
Sure. I do want to talk about this. I’m just curious about this idea of how anarchism and democracy can coexist, because in a purely conservative anarchist system, there would be no governments or there would be no democracies.
There would be no coercion. That’s what anarchism is about. Actually in the US, I think people will call it libertarianism now, but it carries a very different notion — a capitalist notion.
At the end of the day, this is about people’s agency. This is about people who look at a piece of disinformation and can act through direct action without waiting for the central command or any centralizing state apparatus to mediate their action.
This is about empowering as many people as possible. This is about decentralization, really, but the “conservative” part means that we cherish the 20 national languages and their cultures. This is not about taking down the temples and churches and the indigenous nations in the service of some tech elite that runs a synthetic AI. This is about using technology to empower all these cultures fully instead of picking one and saying let’s just go with that “progress.”
In Washington, the debate is over whether or not these technology platforms are now the most powerful.
Maybe they are.
I think maybe they are too. How should we approach that problem? Do you advocate for more government regulation over these tech platforms, and how should that be set up?
I’m all for social sector control. This is a slightly unfamiliar term to the DC debate. Because I read about public-private partnership or public-private sector conflict and I was like, “Where is the social sector?”
Apparently the social sector as a sector isn’t as visible in the US in debates like this. There’s of course calls to establish a national public reading, the digital realm or public parks…
We do have national public radios.
Public radios. These are actually very good examples of public spaces. You have pretty good parks, campuses, or national parks. It’s…
My wife works for a public broadcasting system.
Excellent. That’s a common good, right?
I think so. Not everybody agrees with that. That’s also become hyper politicized in our…
That’s the thing. When people watch the Public TV broadcast in Taiwan, they don’t usually affiliate it with any particular party. They could enjoy the show, maybe “The World Between Us,” and have a real debate about all sort of societal issues as the NPR would do.
Nobody would normally associate that with the ruling party. That’s a good example of a commons or social sector, or civil society-led conversation. Now, in Taiwan, it just so happens that our largest Reddit-like forum, the PTT, this in the social sector unlike Reddit, which has to think about shareholder value or whatever, or Facebook, which has to think about advertisement and so on.
The PTP never had a shareholder or advertisement. It’s entirely within the common academic network. In fact, the governing body is called a Bulletin Board System Research Club in the National Taiwan University — it is a voluntary association of undergrads running the most important public forum in Taiwan for 25 years. Source code is open and governance is distributed, and you earn moderator privileges by contributing to community, not by shareholder appointment. Because we have multiple good examples at PTT, g0v, and so on, that’s our daily life.
When we look at mainline Google and say, oh, they should of course, coexist and co-thrive with the journalistic endeavors, there’s this good, well-trusted intermediary community that can mediate this conversation. It’s not an either/or public or private thing.
You have to build it before you can use it?
Exactly. I think the US has very good foundational context and experience on that, it’s just that it’s not under an umbrella of social sector, digital commons — it’s not currently seen as a sector.
Fascinating. Can I move on to ask you about China?
Of course, this weekend it’s very hard to ignore that the party congress is going on. I’m wondering, first of all general question, can I ask for your reactions to what you’re saying on the TV about this? What’s coming out? What does it tell you about the duration of the Chinese government, what that means for Taiwan?
Well, it’s quite clear that there’s also clarity in leadership around, well, all things, not just Taiwan-related affairs in the congress. What used to be a internal check and balance, if you can call that, within their party system, I would say that there’s much more consolidated compared to the previous term.
Now, I’m not “anticipating” anything, as cyberattacks already happen a million times a day. It’s not like we’re preparing ourselves for something in the future, it’s just like what we’re facing now will probably continue for a while. We need to prepare ourselves for it, much like we prepare our infrastructure for earthquakes.
I noticed there were some changes to how the Chinese government approaches Taiwan, especially the Taiwan Affairs Office totally gone…
…from the Central Committee, replaced by people much closer to Xi’s ideas.
What does that then say to you?
Well, I’m not an expert on CCP politics. I’m just taking it from a cybersecurity point of view. This hybrid cognitive-cyberattack combination, that’s probably something we need to, not just in our drills, or in our training or exercises, but rather is something that we must prepare ourself to face in a day-to-day basis.
In the case following Pelosi’s visit, that’s like a drill, that’s like a taste that was to come. I think we need to prepare ourselves to a situation where these two previously only used… It’s similar to how the air incursions used to only happen when something big happens, but nowadays, it’s like all the time. We need to prepare ourselves for something like that.
Do you think TikTok is a vector of cognitive warfare for the Chinese government?
I think anything that has a high basic reproduction number, a high R-number, is a place for going viral.
No. What I mean, specifically because the algorithm is controlled by a Chinese owned company that has no transparency and no accountability, this is a huge debate in DC. The Trump Administration actually tried to ban TikTok, and the US courts undid it.
It was admitted to go through a legal process, but there’s a growing contingent of lawmakers in Washington who believe that the lack of transparency plus the nature of the content that’s received from the algorithm makes this a threat.
Actually, this has become a political cognitive warfare weapon or maybe even an information warfare weapon. What do you think about it?
Many legislators here are also concerned because if you open a Web page within TikTok, it measures the telemetry, the real-time interaction.
I don’t mean just that, I mean the actual content as cognitive warfare.
That’s one thing, the output, but I’m also talking about input. The profiling that it can do to the person, often very young people interacting with the app, lets the app build a mental model for precision targeting to send convincing messages and so on. It’s something that we in general think that the people, the population, should be more aware of.
It’s like you will not let underage people go to a kind of liquor bar without adults accompanying them and educating them about the adverse effects of overdose, of alcohol can have on your nervous system, things like that. In a sense, it’s very much like liquor, because it’s addictive. It has mental health consequences.
Tell me about it. I got here at 11 o’clock last night and I was lying in bed scrolling. I definitely have a problem.
Also, if the young child use that as a substitute for the real connections socially face to face, as opposed to something that helps them to meet new friends. If this is something so they don’t have to meet new friends, then that also causes isolating effect.
The adverse effect is multiple. Nowadays we’re on two tracks. First is cybersecurity and profiling and so on. That is within our limits, and so we’re also doing our legal through Congress and to the departments about this particular part.
The cognitive part, the addictive parts, the media competence education, that’s Ministry of Education, and as I understand, they’re also working on it.
Excellent. Thank you. Can you talk to me about the scope and the scale of the threat of Chinese government, disinformation, and tag warfare when it comes to local politics? Interference in Taiwanese politics, and especially as the election comes up, what are you seeing?
First of all, I think again, this is not about pro- any party or anti- any party. This is about trying to say to us that democracy doesn’t work, democracy only lead to chaos and so on. In 2020 election, the tone was trying to portray the Hong Kong protestors as “violent mobs that really needs police to teach them a lesson because they’re paid $200,000 to kill police.”
These were the most viral in Taiwan. Even though they’re not viral at all in Hong Kong or other PRC jurisdictions. It’s specifically targeting the Taiwanese population because we don’t understand if people see the people protesting Hong Kong with sympathy, then so-called “one country two systems” is gone.
Like nobody in Taiwan will be supporting “one country two systems” once they see the Hong Kong protestors as legitimate. We see a lot concerted disinformation take on this very particular issue. The result of 2020 election shows that their narratives didn’t work out.
This time around, there’s far more messages about a US direct control narrative. The disinformation was around like…
Again, we’re not that competent.
…that “democracy is a façade, now the CIA runs the election here” and so on.
They don’t have that. I’m here to tell you they’re not there. Maybe 50 years ago they could do that kind of thing.
That’s the new tactic, painting it more as a struggle with the US and the West. That’s interesting.
That narrative is actually more difficult to mount nowadays.
Because previously, before the pandemic, the narrative will have a punch line that says, “So the enlightened Chinese model as practiced by the Beijing regime, which combines a vibrant market — Tencent or something — with vibrant innovation, is better than this façade of democracy.” That punch line no longer works.
Because the PRC made it very clear that the so-called wild innovations must now be nationalized for certain international interests. Objectively it’s not the sort of “wild innovation” anymore.
They destroyed their own propaganda line by going backwards in terms of innovation, openness, and reform. They had to come up with a new theory of why their system is better and… to blame Washington.
It’s much more difficult now to come up with a theory that convinces Taiwanese people, why is it better to adopt their “whole-process,” “democratic centralism,” or something like that.
That gets me to my next topic, which is democracy versus autocracy. You’re wearing the Ukraine shirt, you’re speaking to the World Movement for Democracy. You seem to believe, and by the way, I agree with this, that the greater struggle between free and open societies, that people living under aggressive tyrannical, totalitarian states, is a defining struggle of our generation.
By our generation, I mean our generation, like me and you almost the same age. This is now the turnover of governance not yet in Washington because we still have a gerontocracy, but eventually we’ll have a turnover of governance.
If you had asked me 10 years ago if that would be about democracy versus autocracy, I would’ve said that’s crazy. Young people didn’t think in those terms, but now they do even…Tell me about your theory of the overall struggle between freeing up in societies, and for against those regimes who are aggressive totalitarian, expansionist, and/or oppressive.
How do you think that should inform our discussion about everything else that we’re talking about?
When we say “Free the Future” I think this is not just about the possibilities in Taiwan and in the US. I also think about the people who are currently under authoritarian rule. When these people look at the media landscape, when they try to do journalistic independent work, there are technologies that can support them to connect them to the democratic family in the world.
In fact, that’s what I did professionally. In early 2000s, I was part of the Freenet Development Group when the so-called gray firewall, the collegial project, and so on, was in its infancy. I was in the first generation to empower the independent journalists within the Great Firewall.
This also goes back to my family. My dad was in Tiananmen in 1989.
Oh, wow. I didn’t know that.
Yeah. Until the 1st of June. He did extensive reporting and fortunately he returned home…
He was a journalist?
Yeah, he’s a journalist. My mom was also a journalist. There’s a lot of memories… My dad would later on also report on the fall of Berlin Wall and also study for his PhD in Saarland in Germany with exiles from Tiananmen because his PhD thesis was on the communication structure of the Tiananmen protestors.
I also went to Germany for a year and talked to those government exiles, very young people. That has an effect on me, saying that even though that we’re hailing from very different jurisdictions, and in fact have very different viewpoints — not necessarily that Tiananmen protesters think Taiwan should determine our own future…
Interesting.
…but instead of debating on these ideologies, we can focus on what sort of communication structure makes it possible to amplify the voice that actually drives social reform in a feasible way, in a more friendly way, instead of having the autocracies come out and say “democracy only lead to chaos, so we have to squash you,” or something like that.
To end the authoritarian narrative of legitimacy, I think that was the main conversations I’ve been having, since I was am 11-years old.
I watched some of your podcast this week with perhaps what’s going to be one of my favorite episode, with the Lithuanian Minister of Education and Innovation. I also really like the Argentina one that was about how she hacked democracy. That was really interesting.
Lithuania is an interesting case study for us in Washington because, here are two small countries staring at huge dictatorships that threaten their very existence really, and now working together. I’m wondering if you could tell me about your role in working with Lithuania? How’s that going? Where have you found the real opportunities for overlaps for collaboration?
Yeah, definitely. As you have seen from the video podcast, there is a very strong interest to facilitate travel so that people on both sides can come to learn about each other’s culture. I myself plan to visit as soon as possible.
Oh, really?
We’re in budget defense parliamentary session. I cannot really travel in next couple of months. As soon as I can travel, I think early next year or something.
You’re going to go to Lithuania.
I’ll plan a visit.
Oh, fascinating. That will be your first overseas trip since the ministry…?
As the moda minister? Maybe. Of course, a lot of people also from Japan want me to visit. We don’t know, but we’ll see. The point I’m making is that during the pandemic there’s a lot more Taiwanese people learning about Lithuania.
Not just the Representative Offices, but also the kind of mask donation, vaccine donation, this kind of circulation of trust, of fight the pandemic together, and also their own history, as you just mentioned, facing up to large autocracies and so on, supporting Taiwan.
There’s a lot of goodwill on both sides that can turn into real collaboration projects. Of course, the moda has within our scope, service security, digital transformation, as I mentioned, 5G infrastructure, and things like that.
On these particular topics, of course, we start ready to cooperate. More than that, I think as I mentioned, we can amplify the same message of freeing the future. That is also on a cognitive defense level, something we can share together.
Then Ukraine is another example. Are there current projects of collaboration with Ukraine that you can talk about?
We studied in detail how the Diia application worked. Actually back in the days, even before I joined the cabinet I was in the Paris for the open government partnership and hackathons and so on. That’s when they’re working on ProZorro, the open procurement platforms.
Our transparency activists and their transparency activists have collaborated, even before I was a minister. It is this shared sense of digital transformation should stay transparent to these people, not to surveil the people, not to make the people transparent to the state. This sheer sentiment that brings the people together.
We have seen that it paid real dividends because people in Ukraine, they have built this mutual trust. There’s civic participation portals and all sort of e-government stuff. When they turn overnight, they include this crowdsourcing reporting drone target or whatever, and watching Euro vision platform.
Then they enlisted like-people from all stripes and there’s no parties difference, regional difference, or something, people become part of the resilient structure. I think this is something that we really need to learn from events. A lot of people here have heard me doing this keynote speech. I think we will collaborate more with them in the future.
Are they practical things you can do to help the Ukrainians now in the middle of their crisis?
Quite a few. The humanitarian aid, of course that’s our foreign services…
I mean on these issues, on these digital.
On digital issues, we can contribute our own cybersecurity designs, like protecting our website through the InterPlanetary File System, Web3, and so on, as Public Code. If you go to our website, it says “no copyright reserved.”
We provide contributions in both components so that if people from Ukraine, but also from anywhere in the world, want to reuse those components, they can freely do so, where we share the same commons repository.
Just as we set the public code from the Nordic countries like Estonia, Finland, Iceland, and so on, so too can we contribute into the common spool so that… For example, we can do penetration testing on those components, discover vulnerabilities, and then help them to uncover possible vulnerabilities before the authoritarians take advantage of those. It’s all in a shared open-source public function.
Do you have any specific Taiwan/Ukraine operation efforts ongoing now that are addressing their current crisis?
In addition to the T-shirt?
(laughter)
Well, nothing in particular than I can disclose at the moment, but hopefully, in due time.
Some things that you can disclose?
Hopefully, in due time.
Interesting, got it. You talked about for the future, does that apply to people inside closed societies now?
Is Internet freedom a universal right that we should…?
Yes, of course.
How do we do that? Should we break the Great Firewall and then bring it down once and for all?
Interestingly, the “great firewall” never really blocked, for example, GitHub, the point that I was making now where our public code goes to, because if they do, they close-up themselves to the cutting-edge AI research.
There’s a whole world of coding which is uncensored. Some people talk about VR and XR as a space where censorship has not yet reached what we can reach with…?
Or the so-called web3. There’s a lot of people in Hong Kong or in other PRC jurisdictions that saves their writing on the blockchain or on IPFS, precisely because they know that these cannot be censored. Their names, once put on this article, the article cannot be heavily edited to say something they didn’t intend to say, which happens all the time in authoritarian environments.
This new technology, web3 technologies which were designed really to be redundant in a sense that anyone can maintain an extra copy. It’s now also used to just empower the people doing journalism and voicing under autocracies, but also for people suffering from denial-of-service cyberattacks, like us.
It brings this natural alliance between our interest in protecting cybersecurity availability and integrity to the people on the web3 world working to free the future in a freedom of speech sense. Our contribution here was technical and investments, also directly help the people in need and those under pressure, under surveillance jurisdictions.
Do you think that autocracies and democracies ultimately can coexist in the…?
You mean, like, currently we’re not coexisting?
Well, it’s not going well.
I know. It’s not going well.
There has long been people, especially in the pro-human-right, pro-democracy small and liberal camp saying, perhaps we should shift to a strategy that doesn’t assume that cooperation with totalitarian aggressive regimes.
Like “net zero dictatorship” or something like that?
Something like that. The question is here, is there a compromise to be reached with the autocracy such that we coexist, or is that ultimately a fool’s errand and we should build resilience amongst the free and open societies, but understand that in the end, either democracies or autocracies will prevail in that?
Right, “zero dictators.” It’s a interesting view. However, I would also say that even within liberal democracies, there are also forces that assume or at least are demonstrably something like autocracies. It could be a very large operation ruled by one person. It could be a movement of so-called decentralized organization but ruled by one founder, and so on. These are autocracy-like structures.
…Sure, authoritarian.
Yeah, authoritarian structures, within liberal democracies as well. Usually, the response was through some justification by a sense of urgency. “In the emergency, of course, we have to have a strong commander” and so on.
I think what you’re saying, the non-peaceful coexistence, is a symptom, it’s not the root cause. The root cause is that when emergency happens, our gut instinct among population is not more democracy; it’s not collective intelligence at the moment; it’s not going to the social sector at the moment. Every time there’s a emergency or urgency, there’s another chance for authoritarian tendencies to gain ground even within developed democracies.
I think all that really is a pedagogical point, is to build competence of everyday practice of democracy so that people’s go-to solution is more democracy. Then as I mentioned, the narrative that authoritarian model solves problems better, promotes innovation better, doesn’t quite work as compared to two, three years ago.
We need to further weaken that argument, not by attacking it, but by building convincing narratives that, no matter how large the difference there is in the diversity, democracy can bridge this difference.
Excellent, thank you so much. Do you have aspirations for higher political office here and thereon?
There are exactly two higher political offices, compared to a minister…
No, not at the moment. I’m not in it for the election, and especially because to run for a election in the presidential level, you have to have a party affiliation, and my commitment is to all, so I cannot have a party affiliation. I am happy to be a semi-senior-bureaucrat working with everyone.
Is there anything else that I’ve missed that if you were me, that I would ask you that I haven’t?
Not particularly…?
We covered a lot.
…great job, comprehensive.
We got through a lot.
Great.
I’m out of questions. Thank you so much, really, what a pleasure.
Thank you.
Fascinating, fascinating. My challenge will be to take this conversation and…