Washington, March 13 (CNA) Two U.S. scholars urged the Donald Trump administration to “support Taiwan’s development of strong satellite communications in low-earth orbit,” in an article published in the “Foreign Affairs” journal Thursday.
Daniel Byman, a professor at the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, and Seth G. Jones, a former U.S. Defense Department official, made the call in the 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, where his research focuses on international security, warfare, irregular threats, and terrorism, according to Foreign Affairs.
The two scholars pointed out that Taiwan’s telecommunications infrastructure is vulnerable to “subversion.”
They cited two events as examples, one in February 2023, when two Chinese merchant vessels cut undersea cables connecting Taiwan’s main island with the Matsu Islands, disrupting internet communications.
“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 service and backup microwave communications, but the operator lacks sufficient bandwidth to substitute Taiwan’s fiber-optic cables, Byman and Jones said.
They said Taiwan needs a powerful satellite service to reduce its reliance on undersea cable networks, suggesting that Taiwan collaborate with Amazon’s Kuiper broadband internet 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.
The two scholars also advised Taiwan to work with U.S. cloud services such as Google, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services to store backups of critical data.
While it is understandable that governments prefer to buy local, they said that important data is more vulnerable to China’s cyberattacks, espionage and physical destruction or other attacks if it is all stored by Taiwanese firms.
The article also urged the Taiwanese government to issue more urgent warnings about Beijing’s aggressive actions, including its cable cutting, cyberattacks, air and naval encroachments and military exercises that included a simulated blockade of Taiwan.
They acknowledged the concerns of spooking the Taiwanese public by stating the extent of China’s threat, but suggested Taiwan set up a public data-driven communications platform that regularly alerts citizens about Chinese actions on or near Taiwan.
Such a system could help foster public dialogue and give citizens tools to distinguish between actual threats and misinformation.
“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.
