By Amélie Charnay, Journalist

The Wall Street Journal

In the event of an armed conflict, the small state is afraid of not being able to maintain its communications as well as Ukraine. It tries to reinforce the redundancy of its infrastructures.

Despite cyberattacks and the deluge of fire, Ukraine has managed to stay connected to the Internet since the beginning of the Russian offensive. Not sure that in the event of a Chinese attack, Taiwan can achieve this. The current conflict has put the subject of the vulnerability of its communication infrastructures back on the table, as pointed out by the Wall Street Journal in an article.

Only four landing stations

This autonomous island is extremely dependent on undersea fiber optic cables. According to the American newspaper, 95 per cent of the data and voice traffic of this State would indeed pass under the sea. More precisely, 14 cables would be concerned and four landing stations on the coasts. The cables could be severed by submarines or divers, the stations destroyed by bombardments.

Enough to cause an almost general blackout. There would then only be Internet access via satellite. But priority would be given to relief and government organizations. Not enough to provide a service for the entire population.”’We’re very vulnerable,’ chief executive of TaiwanNetworkInformationCenter, a government-affiliatedcybersecurityand internet–domain–registrationorganization, KennyHuang, confirmed to US newspaper.

Because China still claims the attachment of Taiwan and Beijing has never ruled out seizing it by force. The threat therefore hovers without seeming imminent. If that were to happen, China would probably start by neutralizing communications and critical infrastructure before disembarking.

How Ukraine used social media to raise international awareness of its cause and document war crimes has shown that the Internet is more than ever a game-changing tool in the event of war.

The Asia-Pacific region concerned as a whole

In addition to Taiwan, Japan is also showing signs of concern. The country is also very dependent on submarine cables and has only two landing stations. If they are neutralized, everything can collapse. More generally, the entire Asia-Pacific region is concerned.

The example of the Tonga Islands left an impression. The archipelago had found itself almost cut off from the world after an underwater volcanic eruption which had broken the only cable which connected it to the Internet in January 2020. Connections had been considerably slowed down and the use of social networks prohibited, so as to spare the low bandwidth maintained by satellite access.

Faced with this frightening prospect, Taiwan is trying to encourage redundancy with the construction of new cables. Alphabet and Meta have partnered to deploy a cable linking Taiwan to the United States and the Philippines starting this year. Originally, he also had to go through Hong Kong. But the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had vetoed it in 2019. Another project should also join Taiwan in Japan and other Asian countries in 7920. Finally, one or two additional landing stations could come out of the ground.