Vitaly Portnikov: Greetings here. We really appreciates your time and writing this to be with us in this interview.

Vitaly Portnikov: Our first question will be about the help of the time into Ukraine. It’s not only about the help about the damaged areas, but also the investment of the future our country.

Vitaly Portnikov: Yeah, we know the Lyceum Grono, they received pretty big support by your partners by Acer and with your ministry and your foreign ministry. How important is it to invest in the future education? What will be the education of the future?

Audrey Tang: Thank you for the question. In Taiwan, we have the saying, wherever there is school, there is hope. Indeed, schools are centers of resilience and national revitalization. By equating teachers and students with not just equipment, but the know-how, there’s drive in an additional era we are sowing the seeds for inclusive prosperity.

Audrey Tang: I, myself, a junior high school dropout, but I worked with all schools together to learn a lot to build a better tomorrow, not just for myself, but also for my community of free software and open-source developers.

Audrey Tang: Because of that, I think we understand the power of education to build better tomorrows with the people. Politics should never stand in the way of Rio cooperation. It’s perfectly logical, that during this process, schools should play a frontline role in ensuring that the people’s thirst, foreknowledge, and learning is satiated.

Vitaly Portnikov: My further question will be about the education of the future because in the recent months, weeks, we have seen pretty big opportunities that are possible by means of AI, artificial intelligence. Of course, some usual norms of educational are becoming useless, because by means of the AI, the manuals, the essays can be written by pupils, instead of pupils.

Vitaly Portnikov: What is the future behind education, and how is it possible for the human to remain useful within this era?

Audrey Tang: Before I joined the cabinet in 2016, I was a member of the Basic Education Curriculum Committee in Taiwan. We debated long and frequently about this exact problem, and because of this, we said that let’s change the basic education curriculum.

Audrey Tang: In the new curriculum, we changed literacy, which is about consumption, about memorizing, and so on, literacy into competence. Instead of digital or media literacy, we now talk about media and digital competence, because literacy is when you read or memorize the competencies, when you co-create, when you make new narratives, new products with one another.

Audrey Tang: Indeed, as you said, automation, in not just AI but also search engines, really, have rendered almost obsolete, the education systems requirements for people to memorize things. I think it’s very important that we see the tools in education.

Audrey Tang: Like in Taiwan now, each and every school children have a tablet or when they gets older, notebooks in their classes to use them not just as a consumption device, but as a co-creation device.

Audrey Tang: It’s my hope that with my ministry’s contributions along with the Minister of Foreign Affairs to the schools, and more in the future, we can help each other to become bastions of enlightenment and preparedness for the bright postwar future for Ukraine.

Vitaly Portnikov: Talking about our Ukrainian authorities, they are very proud of their digital advances, recent digital advances. They are aimed at building the real digital state. As the former president of Estonia put it, the form is very important. Actually, not the form is important, but the content itself is important.

Vitaly Portnikov: If we talk about the technology itself, we see that you build the digital country that managed to unite communities. When we talk about China, for example, they use this digital advances in attempts to put surveillance for the community and for the people, to take people under control.

Vitaly Portnikov: How is it possible for the digital state to be turned into democracy and not autocracy? What are the key moments of this?

Audrey Tang: I’ve been aware of the great work from the Ukrainian civic technologies community since the first ProZorro days almost 10 years ago now, and I congratulate Diia success, not just domestically, but now that I’ve learned that USAID is now helping people who want something like Diia around the world to receive support in terms of Diia technology, so a job really well done.

Audrey Tang: Indeed, I think democracies use digital technologies to make the state transparent to its people, while autocracies use technologies to make the people transparent to the state. Very different directions.

Audrey Tang: Last April, I signed a declaration for the future of the Internet with more than 60 partners worldwide, along with the US, Ukraine, Lithuania, and more. In the declaration, we are democracies with very similar ideas.

Audrey Tang: We jointly pledged to promote the openness and interoperability of the Internet in a pluralistic – that’s to say inclusive – way and to use this multi-stakeholder governance approach, not the top-down, coercive approach, to shape the Internet into a resilient structure while strengthening mutual trust and the protection of freedom and human rights.

Audrey Tang: These shared values is an excellent example of borderless collaboration. As Taiwan and Ukraine are both signatories, we are democratic partners bound by the deep-seated respect for freedom, democracy, human rights, rule of law, and international order.

Audrey Tang: We look forward to cooperate closely and strengthening digital resilience for all democracies.

Vitaly Portnikov: I would like to talk about the information war experience. We have put it in one of our questions, and you actually have said that Taiwan has a lot to learn from Ukraine.

Vitaly Portnikov: Of course, prior to the war, the information resistance of Ukrainians was not that successful, and that was due to the fact that many Ukrainians speak Russian and understand Russian fluently, and therefore, they become easy targets for their propaganda.

Vitaly Portnikov: In this respect, Taiwan is like Ukraine, because Taiwanese people also speak China. Or, maybe perhaps due to your experience, Taiwanese people are not so easy targets because of their mindset. How do you think?

Audrey Tang: Indeed. We’ve had a very long history fighting authoritarian expansionism. Consistently, we put a key priority on strengthening resilience of not just our critical infrastructure, but also our journalism, our newsmakers sector so that we can, together, overcome online harms and also increase participation in democratic processes.

Audrey Tang: That’s partly because in Taiwan, democracy is a relatively new thing. We first started the direct presidential election in 1996. That’s already after the Wide Web.

Audrey Tang: When designing our democracy, we put a lot of emphasis on not just the once-every-four-year or every-two-year voting, but also on participatory budgeting, our referendums, our sandbox applications, presidential hackathon, and many continuous democracy, a deliberative democracy.

Audrey Tang: The more that people participate in these forums, the more people become inoculated against the propaganda from the autocracies, because the propaganda was always about that democracy only leads to chaos and only authoritarian models can respond to societal challenges.

Audrey Tang: By practicing democracy, everybody can see that democracy can deliver.

Vitaly Portnikov: Thinking about cyber attacks, we know that that’s an annullable part of any war, and particularly, the Russian war. How do you think, what are the opportunities for the civilized countries, for the democracies to be protected from different cyber attacks, from the outflow of the information, from the different destabilization processes connected with this?

Audrey Tang: Indeed. In this regard, Taiwan and Ukraine are in a similar situation, that’s to say in the frontline, and standing firm against all the attacks. Last August, a couple weeks before Taiwan’s moda, Ministry of Digital Affairs, was founded, we were subject to one of the largest denial of service attacks ever.

Audrey Tang: 23 times in a day compared to the previous peak. This is a huge amount of attack. It’s not just cyber attack, but it’s also in tandem with disinformation, manipulation of information to try to portray, as I mentioned, that democracy only leads to chaos.

Audrey Tang: We successfully counter against that, engaging the Web3 community using InterPlanetary File System, or IPFS, so people from, say, Ukraine or anywhere in the world can donate spare hard disk and spare bandwidth to help our ministries back up our website to keep the website available.

Audrey Tang: This is not unlike the help from the cryptocurrency community to Ukraine in the beginning of the war and throughout the war. Engaging this borderless community, enhancing the cyber security, while developing the necessary cryptographic collaboration to allow us, for example, for me to be recognized as a e-resident of Ukraine and you vice versa.

Audrey Tang: This is very important, both economically and also cybersecurity-wise, so that we do not have to, say, reinvent the wheel, but can instead jointly defend against attacks on our common infrastructure.

Vitaly Portnikov: I have a question about how it was possible for Taiwan to have such a digital informational development. How the whole process work? What was the role of the state? Did it support it, or what was the state control of it, or was there none?

Vitaly Portnikov: Again, how the state supported the private sector, the private initiative? What was your recipe of success, if I may put it like this?

Audrey Tang: Since I was a young child, I’ve always known that the government of Taiwan insists that broadband is a human right. This is important, because through digital infrastructure, we reduce the cost for private sector and the social sector to come up with new technologies.

Audrey Tang: Nowadays, our network infrastructure allows anyone to broadcast live from Jade Mountain, Taiwan’s highest peak. It also safeguards freedom and openness of expression. The other thing that the state does is that it recognizes and subsidizes the digital public spaces, but without governmental control.

Audrey Tang: The largest Taiwanese online bulletin board system for 25 years now, the forum PTT, which is like Reddit in the US, is entirely run within the Taiwan Academic network. It’s free software, it’s governed by its participants, indeed, by a student club, International Taiwan University.

Audrey Tang: While the operation cost is subsidized by the university and therefore by the state, it is not that the state has any say in the freedom of speech, or censorship, or surveillance when it comes to that forum. Because it has no advertisers and no shareholders, it doesn’t serve the interest of surveillance capitalism either.

Audrey Tang: It is our PTT, for example, that we, before anyone really in the world, detected early 2020, indeed, a day before January 1st, 2020, that there is something going on in Wuhan from Dr. Li Wenliang. Therefore, led to our early pandemic response.

Audrey Tang: A digital public space that is treated as a infrastructure subsidized but not controlled by the state is also important, in addition to broadband as a human right.

Vitaly Portnikov: Taiwan and Ukraine have certain points of contact. They have managed to evolve from one monopoly party regime to the democratic regime. Of course, I’m not going to compare the regimes that were present at Taiwan and with the Soviet Communist regime now, but still I think that both Ukrainians and Taiwanese people they didn’t understand what the competition was and what was the power of choice.

Vitaly Portnikov: How successful was this process of change, and what is the particularities of the political culture in Taiwan in this respect?

Audrey Tang: I think you highlighted a very important aspect of Taiwanese politics in that were fundamentally a transcultural, a pluralistic polity. We have 20 national languages, including the sign language now. We recognize emerging equality, the first in Asia.

Audrey Tang: The political culture in Taiwan is as much as it is about party competition than it is also about finding broad consensus, good enough consensus, things that people can live with, despite our really very different backgrounds.

Audrey Tang: I understand that many people portray Taiwan along with other East Asian countries as a homogeneous, Confucius-worshipping culture, but it is not like that in Taiwan. We enjoy absolute freedom in terms of religion. Both my grandparents are Catholic, but my dad is a bit of a Taoist. and so on.

Audrey Tang: This conversation and transcultural co-creation between the different backgrounds that shapes the contemporary Taiwanese culture, and therefore its politics.

Vitaly Portnikov: I would like to ask, if you would be so kind to answer, the development of the relationship between Ukraine and Taiwan actually during the 2022 because, frankly speaking, prior to the war, there was no such dialogue as such. Still right now we see the result, and how do you think what will be the future of it?

Audrey Tang: Although Taiwan did not have a formal diplomatic relationship with Ukraine, our government wasted no time in complementing the countrywide donation drive by joining international sanctions against Russia.

Audrey Tang: I think Taiwan and Ukraine stand shoulder-to-shoulder in defending democracy. This is what bonds us together. Our latest collaboration, the #TaiwanCanHelp #FreeTheFuture campaign just started, and the sky truly is the limit.

Vitaly Portnikov: We often talk about the lessons that can be taken out of the Ukrainian-Russian war. What was the most startling thing for you over the past year? What’s something that amazed you the most in this conflict?

Audrey Tang: When the moda was in its planning phases before the war, the plan was for moda to be a motor of digital transformation in the commercial sector. When the situation happened and we have seen the unprovoked brutal invasion from Russia to Ukraine, we immediately adapted our roadmap so that moda, the ministry now, is more about digital resilience for all.

Audrey Tang: It includes, for example, over this year and next year, 700 non-geostationary satellite receivers in Taiwan and also some abroad, some in fixed places, some in vehicles that’s moving.

Audrey Tang: You probably already know this from first-hand experience, but without high-bandwidth communication to the world during a time of crisis, the world would not know what’s actually happening, and propaganda, disinformation, deepfake video, and so on would probably take over the international media landscape.

Audrey Tang: Keeping communication open, that is the point that we have learned from your experience. We also learned to work with multiple public cloud providers. We engage with Microsoft Azure, Amazon, Google like everyone, and we are also engaging with multiple satellite providers, not to put all our eggs into one basket, so to speak.

Vitaly Portnikov: In principle, could you tell us about the situation within the Taiwanese region? How high is the level of danger, and what are the opportunities or chances, rather, for the real world conflict to be inflicted by the China’s threat? Is there any chance of the possible military cooperation between the democratic states within the region? I mean Japan, South Korea, and others.

Audrey Tang: Just like earthquake prevention, instead of trying to predict exactly when earthquake would occur, we need to build our buildings and plan our cities with resilience in mind. With this, this clarity does not mean escalation. We’re certainly not escalating, and it seems currently that the state of tension is not as high as last August.

Audrey Tang: With that said, we’ve received a lot of attention and conversations with not just geopolitical allies in the Indo-Pacific region, but also outside of the region, people who are connected by shared values in cyber security, in protecting freedom of speech online, overcoming online harm, and so on.

Audrey Tang: Outside of the Indo-Pacific region, because the way we live, and work, and co-create in an open society now, it’s not about neighborhood of geopolitical distance, but neighborhood of shared values. In this, we share very closely with Ukraine our values in making sure that digital sphere remains free from the expansionism of autocracies.

Audrey Tang: Currently, the tension is not that high, and we’re not escalating, but we’re making all preparation that’s needed in case that earthquakes, natural or unnatural, destroy our submarine cables.

Vitaly Portnikov: Ukrainian society has been delivering a long dialogue with Russian society. We had certain attempts to find the common ground, to find the understanding, but eventually, nothing the outcome. How can we assess this dialogue or this communication between Taiwanese and Chinese societies? Is it helpful? Is it possible to have the common ground in this case?

Audrey Tang: As you have demonstrated, I think only with unity against authoritarian expansionism can you truly negotiate and talk as equals. In Taiwan, we are now realizing this more so than ever.

Audrey Tang: As I mentioned, strategic clarity is not escalation, and we stand ready to have conversations about what cultural, scientific, technological, counter-pandemic, helping on the transparency of the counter-pandemic efforts, about mitigating climate crisis, and many other topics.

Audrey Tang: To me, the most personal topic I care about is protecting journalism and protecting freedom of speech both online and also in offline gatherings. On these topics, I believe our own experience democratizing from a more authoritarian – indeed martial-law era – configuration of society can provide some help, some inspiration perhaps, to the reformers within authoritarian regimes.

Vitaly Portnikov: Talking about the possible development of the democratic society within this digitalized era, what prospects and some risks can you name?

Audrey Tang: Certainly. The number one risk is certainly polarization. If the social media is configured as anti-social media, where it amplifies the retweets, the shares of the messages that drives people to work hatred, towards mutual disbelief, to where app is obscene, like not caring about democratic processes and so on, then it actually amplifying authoritarianism.

Audrey Tang: On the other hand, if, as I mentioned, in the digital public spaces, we hold ourselves to account as government officials, the rough consensus co-created by people’s petitions, by the deliberative democratic town halls, and so on, then the same digital spaces may be repurposed into something that is a pro-social social media. The danger is polarization.

Audrey Tang: To overcome the danger, we need to commit to build the digital equivalent of town halls, of public parks, of university campuses, of museums, libraries and national parks outlined so as to promote pro-social conversations that furthers democracy. This is every bit as important as the public constructions and infrastructures in other more concrete morbid areas.

Vitaly Portnikov: We also know that practically, the generation of electorate, electoral generation changes. How do you think what is the difference between the view of the young generation within the generation gap with their parents and what was the importance of digital technical progress to influence such a change of mindset?

Audrey Tang: Intergenerational solidarity is very important. The young people who are digital natives are like ambassadors, I guess, that helps the digital immigrants, such as me, I migrated when I was 12, to be acquainted with the digital world, which by default knows no borders.

Audrey Tang: Indeed, people who are aligned value wise, despite their timezone differences, rapidly identify one another and start new projects like Wikipedia and so on that breaks the previous preconceptions of what was possible for working with essentially people you have never met face to face across a large distance.

Audrey Tang: This is why worldwide co-creation is native to the digital natives. We’re very happy that in Taiwan, through lifelong education, through reverse mentorship by young people to the older people in the cabinet, and so on, we’ve been able to share the wisdom of the elderly generation with the agility of the younger generation together.

Vitaly Portnikov: We have an opportunity to address our young people, to our young children and students. Yes, they are already living within the modern life, digitalized life, but still, right now, they are captured within the archive war waged by Russians. It should be compared to the feudal wars of the past. What would you tell them?

Audrey Tang: I would say that your neighbors are the people who share the same values as you. With the communication infrastructure, with the laptops and notebooks that Taiwan can help provide, I wish that you think beyond the immediate neighborhood, which is, as you said, captured by a feudal era war.

Audrey Tang: Instead or in addition to that, think about your neighborhood in a worldwide community that really cares about what’s happening in Ukraine and your unique experience of both strength and vulnerability is of tremendous importance to the communities worldwide, who would join you in co-creation for a better future together.

Vitaly Portnikov: We really appreciate your support. Thank you for your time for this interview. We really feel your support that you are standing side by side with Ukraine. Thank you ever so much.

Audrey Tang: Thank you.

Vitaly Portnikov: Thank you.

Audrey Tang: Live long and prosper.