Mark Stokes: Yeah. I’m sure Mike could give some background on what we’re doing here.

Michael Mazza: We have a project with the Project 2049 Institute, which Mark leads. My name is Michael Mazza. I’m with the American Enterprise Institute and the Global Taiwan Institute. Russell, as you know, is with the Global Taiwan Institute. This Project 2049 initiative is to put together what we’re calling a Track 1.5 dialogue on PRC political influence both here in Taiwan and in the United States.

Michael Mazza: The ultimate outcome will be a report that we’ll put together looking at similarities and differences and, ultimately, try and put forward some policy proposals, ways to collaborate in order to deal with this issue.

Audrey Tang: On the GTI website?

Michael Mazza: It’ll be on the Project 2049 website. What we’re doing here, Mark and Russell have been here for the past few days they can tell you what they’ve been up to.

Michael Mazza: Today and tomorrow, I think our goal is to hear from you and other folks in the government about what Chinese influence ops have been like leading into the January 2020 elections and learn a bit about how they’ve been similar and different to what happened ahead of last November’s elections. Again, talk about ways that the United States can be helpful in dealing with this issue.

Audrey Tang: Anything you would like to…

Mark Stokes: It’s the first time that we’ve actually met. I don’t know if you remember, but maybe three or four years ago, with Chia-Liang Kao…You know CLKao, right?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, of course.

Mark Stokes: They had mentioned your name. They said, “Hey, you should talk to some of the younger generation in Taiwan,” because I was big on ROC. Ask the question to younger people in Taiwan, that they refer to the country’s ROC Taiwan.

Audrey Tang: Republic of citizens, I’m sure.

Mark Stokes: They’ve sent you an email, copied me, and asked you. You said something like, “It doesn’t really matter as long as it’s viewed as a country.”

Audrey Tang: Well, as long as it’s a republic of citizens.

Mark Stokes: That gave us so much more confidence and I’ve been pushing a particular solution for US policy for a long time, having to do with…

Mark Stokes: It’s related to influence operations, but issues like soft balancing, to use Russell’s word. Soft balance in the sense of US policy in the Taiwan Strait oftentimes is very militarized, which is not bad, but often overly militarized, and it doesn’t think enough about other aspects like legitimacy. Legitimacy is different than sovereignty.

Mark Stokes: Looking at the ways the US can extend greater legitimacy to Taiwan in a way that can balance legitimacy on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. It can be called different things, soft balancing is one, but I know it can be called ROC, basically like US “one China, two governments” policy, where the US could maintain some form of a one China policy that makes people happy.

Mark Stokes: China, or even some here in Taiwan, without having any definition at all. Most important thing is viewing as two legitimate governments.

Audrey Tang: Like two jurisdictions?

Mark Stokes: Use the word as close you can to state, it’s actually two states.

Audrey Tang: Legitimate governments.

Mark Stokes: Legitimate government. Most recently, another manifestation is looking at, pushing as an institute, Russell joined in on this, it was kind of part Dan Blumenthal joined, we had a simulation of a joint communiqué, simulated the process of negotiating a joint communiqué. That was in the media here recently. That’s another mechanism to use to be able to change people’s thinking in the US.

Mark Stokes: The target audience is Americans. Taiwan is not, I don’t think it’s that hard. I think most Taiwanese would be willing to engage, start negotiation on joint communiqué, or a joint statement. It’s US policy that really needs some change, so I’m trying to open people’s minds a bit. That’s just broad background.

Audrey Tang: That’s very innovative work.

Mark Stokes: As an institute we’ve been around for 10 years, we’ve had several iterations of people who have come and gone. Russell’s one of our alumni, for three years.

Russell Hsiao: Proud alumni.

Mark Stokes: Until he went to law school, now helped to establish Global Taiwan Institute, ROC has a very close relationship with GTI, a very close relationship with Mike. This particular project is Mike’s, that we’re working on now, is Mike’s brainchild.

Mark Stokes: Trying to pull together individuals from both Taiwan side and US side, who have been focused on influence operations to be able to share experiences.

Russell Hsiao: OK. Well thank you very much. It’s truly an honor to meet you again, minister. You may recall that I had the privilege of briefly meeting you when you were in Washington, DC not too long ago at the Stimson Center.

Audrey Tang: That’s right.

Russell Hsiao: I learned a great deal from you in terms of your efforts in leading this country’s digital modernization and digital governance. An issue area that is increasingly, now, front and center of the ideological competition that we’re encountering and the recognition in the United States that the competition with China right now is an ideological one.

Russell Hsiao: This was clearly reflected in Secretary Pompeo’s recent speech that he gave at a Hudson event in New York where he pointed out that it is no longer in the US interest to ignore the fundamental differences between the two systems represented by United States and the free world and that of the repressive system of the People’s Republic of China.

Russell Hsiao: This is in no small measure an indication that there is a recognition in the US that we have ignored our values for too long in dealing with the rise of China.

Russell Hsiao: Nowhere is this reflected more strongly in terms of the long-term implications than in technological space, both in terms of the implications on these with the future trajectory of the international system, the liberal world order, but also in terms of our everyday freedoms that people want to and do enjoy. We are facing a contest of ideas here.

Russell Hsiao: It’s all the more important that like-minded partners and allies are able to work together not only in the physical world but in the digital world. That, perhaps, has even far-lasting implications in terms of how integrated technology is not only with our own daily lives but also in terms of how governments interact globally.

Russell Hsiao: My input in this project that Mike is working on comes from a more regional perspective. I have also been engaging in research related to CCP influence and operations not only in Taiwan but looking at other Asian countries to include Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and also Hong Kong.

Russell Hsiao: As we all know, Hong Kong is undergoing some very profound changes and looking at these different techniques and methods in which the Chinese Communist Party engages in trying to change the social and political fabrics that society through propaganda, United Front, which are further enabled by technology now in this digital world provides a telling lesson for Taiwan.

Russell Hsiao: And what happens in Taiwan provides a telling lesson for the world. There’s a lot to learn in terms of what is happening here.

Russell Hsiao: My approach to dealing with this issue is to start with a hypothesis. The hypothesis is that while these specific policy objectives, strategic otherwise, may differ vis-à-vis various different countries, their methodologies are nonetheless similar.

Russell Hsiao: Those methodologies include traditional United Front activities of reaching out to various constituencies that are mostly more on the fringe elements of society. You can find that it’s generally harder for Beijing to penetrate mainstream of those societies and public opinions. Japan is a prime case of that.

Russell Hsiao: Despite a underreported volume of activities that are happening in Japan, for the most part, they’re still active in reaching out to the fringe groups in that society, which reflect an inability, at this point right now, to influence public opinion.

Russell Hsiao: Still, it’s quite high, the negative opinion in Japan towards China. So much so that General Secretary, Xi Jinping, recently told Japan that Japan needs to do more to improve the perceptions of Japanese people towards China, despite the fact, of course, much of that negative public opinion stems from what China [laughs] is doing in the East China Sea in terms of a lot of their behavior.

Russell Hsiao: Beyond that though, there’s another working hypothesis that I find at least reflected to be more evident through my research, which is the reinforcing mechanisms of the propaganda apparatus and the United Front apparatus.

Russell Hsiao: We have a tendency to isolate them and think of them as autonomous units. But I think the systems, as Mark often likes to refer to in terms of a system analysis, is that you find that propaganda reinforces United Front and United Front reinforces propaganda. I think this is very clearly reflected in operations in Hong Kong for instance. We’ll just call them CCP media outlets.

Audrey Tang: Part of the United Front?

Russell Hsiao: Right, where United Front groups are actually advertising [laughs] on those meida outlets and how they censor information about the protests.

Russell Hsiao: Again, it’s important to look at this holistically. Oftentimes, we have a tendency to look at these in very siloed ways. When we look at it more holistically, we appreciate much more of the implication.

Russell Hsiao: Looking at again Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Hong Kong, and then trying to identify the various methodologies, the platforms that are being used, develop case studies to discern their type methodologies. Then, I think going forward, being able to have a much better granular understanding about really this type of malign influence operation that the Chinese Communist Party is engaged in.

Russell Hsiao: I do want to be specific. All governments engage in some form of influence operations. We have to be clear in terms of why it is that the Chinese Communist Party influence operation that engages in is so much of a concern. It has to come from the specific types of behaviors that they’re engaged in and also the nature of that regime.

Russell Hsiao: There’s a growing awareness about why that regime is actually such a threat. That comes from again the ideological component of the strategic competition with China that is now becoming much more on the forefront of our discussions.

Russell Hsiao: I’ll leave it at that, but be happy to talk more specifically about what I observed in Singapore, Japan. I did field studies for the research that I’m working on. While I haven’t done my field research yet in South Korea, I do think South Korea could provide some very interesting examples about CCP influence operations there.

Russell Hsiao: Again, as a organization focused on Taiwan however, as GTI is, we’re literally looking in terms of how Taiwan’s experience in these very various areas apply to what is happening in the world.

Russell Hsiao: You certainly don’t need me to tell you that Taiwan’s experience matters. But I think there is a growing appreciation in the world for what’s happening in Taiwan because the rest of the world is facing it now. Taiwan’s been facing United Front for a very, very long time.

Mark Stokes: Since 1937. Russell and I back in 2012, 2013 spent about a year, no funding, no particular reason other than…Well, there’s a background to it. It focused on one aspect of Chinese political warfare, Community Party political warfare at the PLA side, which is probably one of the most overlooked aspects of PLA military operations, which is the pervasive role of the political work system.

Mark Stokes: I’m until today somewhat biased in terms of behind every action, whether its targeted against Taiwan or the US, a bias that, first suspect, whether it’s basically applying perception management techniques of disinformation and the like, going through PT, whatever term he wants to use, injecting false information.

Mark Stokes: Somewhere back there my suspicion if it’s a campaign, that campaign probably is coordinated by Central Military Commission Political Work Department Liaison Bureau. Just a thought. Somewhere back there, it has to be. Long story behind that.

Mark Stokes: I’d be interested, I think all would, in your portfolio, background about what your office does, and your story.

Audrey Tang: My office is literally, as we were saying, one delegate from each ministry that wish to work out loud as we say here. You saw the posted notes and all the various artifacts as you walked in. It’s basically the system we’re setting up and getting about 12 ministries to participate in day-to-day conversations with the public.

Audrey Tang: This is because, with social media, we’ve seen that people feel disconnected with the government, although the distance is exactly the same in information theory terms if you vote is three bits every four years and so on. But people have much more closer relationship with one another using hashtags now.

Mark Stokes: Sort of a transparency mission?

Audrey Tang: I would say it’s a trust mission. It is a getting government to trust the people without expecting anyone to trust back.

Audrey Tang: I like the word contest there because it is a contest of what is, what constitutes as legitimacy in governance. That is a very different vision, a very different track, so different from the PRC that I’m not sure whether the word competition still captures it. Imagine two runners running in opposite directions. We wouldn’t say they are competing. I think that is the core work.

Audrey Tang: More concretely, this is I just returned to Taipei. Every other week or so, I tour around Taiwan to the most rural, indigenous, offshore places, have a meeting with the local social entrepreneurs and elders.

Audrey Tang: But I make sure that the five municipalities and the central government people, section chief or higher, are connected through the Internet to these face-to-face meetings, a kind of amplified town hall if you will, and get the 12 ministry to work across silos. Many solutions are just brainstormed there with the credit goes to the public service and the risk absorbed by me.

Audrey Tang: Some of the best ideas could came out of this become entries in the presidential hackathon, which is a three-months event every year where the president gives out five awards, for two years now, to five such ideas that has the potential to be scaled in a national scale.

Audrey Tang: It could be telemedicine. It could be AI-based water leak detection. It could be air box and water box. That is to say, social sector data collaboratives.

Mark Stokes: Most of them are on the technology side?

Audrey Tang: Social technology…If you count social organization, like new voting methods, like quadratic voting, as technology, then of course, it’s on the technology side, but it’s not traditional digital/industrial technology as we know it.

Audrey Tang: Also, we get people to participate in participatory budget petition systems and things like that so that people maintain a direct line of communication with the career public service, so much so that they feel they have some way to participate in the policy-setting, especially on the agenda-setting field.

Audrey Tang: For example for our mountaineering and hiking policy change, we just opened up all the access to the mountains and so on. Next will be to the seas.

Audrey Tang: It’s a new thing even for career public service, so we rely on the civil society to contribute on the agenda-setting part. This is what we call listening at scale, and we develop a lot of technology with international partners to enable listening at scale and make democracy something that people do every day, rather than every couple of years. That’s the short brief of it.

Mark Stokes: Very domestic-focused. Any effort…

Audrey Tang: I wouldn’t say so. None of this is purely domestic-focused.

Mark Stokes: None? Interesting.

Audrey Tang: None. Just one example. We work with AIT to set up four digital dialogues to look at how we can go beyond military collaborations with the USA. We ask a simple question. You can say it’s domestic, but it would be misleading, because we ask, “How do we promote Taiwan’s role in global community?” That’s one of the four promotes of Brent Christensen, the director of the AIT.

Audrey Tang: It’s, of course, domestic in the sense that a lot of people in Taiwan want this to happen, but all the suggestions as tallied by this AI-based conversation system where people can only resonate with each other’s statements but not reply highlights both the points of divisiveness as well as the points of agreement.

Audrey Tang: The main point of divisiveness is of course, “Every time the PRC close the international door for Taiwan, the US should open one for Taiwan someplace else.”

Mark Stokes: Say it again?

Audrey Tang: The most divisive statement out of the first digital dialogue with AIT was, “Every time PRC closes an international door for Taiwan, the US should try and open one for Taiwan someplace else.” This neatly divides the participants into halves.

Mark Stokes: I actually would modify that just a little bit.

Audrey Tang: Sure.

Mark Stokes: Because as Americans, you can only control ourselves. You can’t tell the Solomon Islands or others what to…We have much more of a high degree of control over our own policy. I would twist that a little bit and say, for every door that closes because of what the Communist Party is doing, then US is obligated to basically extend – basically fill that vacuum by extending greater legitimacy.

Mark Stokes: In other words, we take responsibility to move toward a more normal, stable, constructive relationship instead of…

Audrey Tang: You’re basically brainstormign with your friends here, someplace here, [laughs] because they will categorize people’s opinions according to the clusters.

Michael Mazza: It surprises me that that’s a very divisive…

Audrey Tang: It is.

Michael Mazza: …statement.

Audrey Tang: Super-divisive.

Michael Mazza: Why?

Audrey Tang: Why? Because it renders Taiwan as something that’s…In many people’s idea of sovereignty, a sovereign country should not rely on another sovereign one. Basically, less agency asserting jurisdiction by oneself, but rather relying on another government to lend itself legitimacy.

Audrey Tang: That is probably what it left…what this group is thinking.

Mark Stokes: I can’t see the different groupings. You have categorizations or groupings of attitudes?

Audrey Tang: It’s done by machine learning. It’s called k-Means clustering. It’s a simple algorithm. Just like Netflix tells you which films you would like to watch or Amazon does – their recommendation – based on your previous responses, and working it with every other people’s multidimensional responses. This way, the AI finds the cluster of people that feel very similarly about a set of policy issues.

Audrey Tang: The most important thing is this picture. There’s only one such divisive statement. People agreed with most of the things with most of their neighbors most of the time when it comes to any dialogue that we set up, actually, and this is no exception.

Audrey Tang: People say that we should build more stronger connection with other Indo-Pacific countries without relying on the US as a kind of pivot, and that we should look beyond military. I’m sure education, good governance, public health, science, technology, engineering, math, manufacturing, language training, women’s rights, environmental sustainability, and so on.

Audrey Tang: There’s very many concrete suggestions. For example, the US should send someone to the presidential hackathon, which they did, a couple weeks after this consultation. This is a way, I would say…For a collaborative agenda-setting, it’s – by nature, of course, people look into more domestic issues, but the rippling effect is by no means domestic. Which is why I hesitate when you say it’s mostly domestic issues.

Mark Stokes: Do you frame the questions almost in a survey format, or…?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, well, we call it a wiki survey, where people write their own statements for other people to vote on.

Mark Stokes: You can come up with all kinds of interesting questions…

Audrey Tang: Yeah.

Mark Stokes: …that I actually would rather pose toward Americans, because that’s really the key obstacle here.

Mark Stokes: In Taiwan…again, Russell, I don’t know if you’re maybe tired of me raising this issue, but a key question would be, particularly targeted toward the pan-blue side of it, but a question could be, if the United States after the election approached the new leadership and proposed the initiation of negotiations that could lead toward either a joint communiqué or a joint statement that outlines…

Mark Stokes: And communicates to populations on both sides policies in terms of agreements and disagreements, would you agree with that?

Audrey Tang: Mm-hmm.

Mark Stokes: I think most in Taiwan who think about it say, “A joint communiqué?” because they think normalization, but the reactions on this could be interesting. I ask the same questions.

Audrey Tang: I think KMT did try that frame before Hong Kong. Something about a peace accord.

Mark Stokes: A peace accord, but that’s with China. Here, it’s a joint communiqué with the United States.

Audrey Tang: I’m aware of that. I’m aware of that. What I’m trying to say is that I think people generally think of a joint communiqué as something that they associate with history…

Mark Stokes: Yes.

Audrey Tang: …like something that already happened. A revised version of that is a very interesting idea. I’m with you there, but because from the DC, it’s been taken mostly in the form of new acts around the area, around Taiwan travel, around all sort of things like that. Well, recently, Hong Kong.

Audrey Tang: These are not communiqués though. These are something that the Congress says that the president need and the administration need to behave in such-and-such a way. Of course, the U.S. President also said that his administration will treat each of the provisions of the Act consistently with his constitutional authorities with respect to foreign relations. That is what the public discussion has been framed in the probably couple of years since the ratification of the Taiwan Travel Act.

Audrey Tang: So if you want to elevate communiqué into a higher status than the current running set of acts, one need a very creative frame for that.

Mark Stokes: On this one, the rationale is that…I mean, the goal and the vision – there should be a lot more supportive things – I’ve noticed both in the US and Taiwan is that there’s very, very little vision. There’s not much idealism. Among pure pro-independence, knew the Constitution, those type.

Mark Stokes: For those types, there is some vision. They know what they want to be in the future. Beyond that, one of the issues in Taiwan and the US is that there’s very few people that said, “I have a vision for the future.”

Mark Stokes: Let’s say for example, picking the year 2030, and you establish a vision statement. Put it in the present tense. Let’s say it is 2030. The United States and Taiwan enjoy normal, stable, and constructive relations. Then you have to define each one.

Mark Stokes: Let’s say normal. What is a normal relationship? A normal relationship is where we treat Taiwan in the same way that we would Philippines. You have to ratchet it back a bit.

Mark Stokes: When you look at the manifestations of a normal relationship, obviously an embassy, senior-level business – there are exchanges – one of the most visible manifestations of a normal relationship is the way that two governments communicate. Every single government, you have a joint statement. You’ll have a minister of foreign affairs and secretary of state or some sort of articulation of policy and common shared interests.

Mark Stokes: I would challenge one to name any other country in which there’s not been a joint statement that’s bilateral. With Taiwan, since 1979, there’s never been a joint statement. It’s always unilateral. The TRA is a unilateral statement. Congressional law is a unilateral statement.

Mark Stokes: What happens is without this, you don’t have a means to communicate to populations. American people…It’s a process of negotiation and it’s a process, then, of coming up with a joint statement and issuing it to populations on both sides that you can work together toward a common vision.

Audrey Tang: I’m with you there. The very reason why we run those four digital dialogues is try to build pillars for eventual process of getting the people on both sides to care about such a dialogue in the first place.

Mark Stokes: The bilateral issue.

Audrey Tang: The process to get to a bilateral is of course more important than the wording of the bilateral. In the second dialogue, which is about economy, of course, people talk about micro-FDAs for precisely this reason, because we know the full FDA is difficult for administration on both sides.

Audrey Tang: Maybe it’s possible to just look at some parts that already have broad consensus and just sign a rapid series of micro-FDAs, and each would be a bilateral. That reaffirms, as you said, the legitimacy of the government-to-government relationship and so on. I’m with you on that point. I’m just saying that the process there, as I hear from you, is more important than the actual wording of the communiqué.

Mark Stokes: Exactly. There’s a precedent for this. It goes back into the history, but I was in DoD for seven years, in charge of US-Taiwan defense relations. Yeah, back in those days, it was a blossoming, because always sitting around doing ideas, crazy ideas that actually never went anywhere – some good, some bad.

Mark Stokes: One of the best ones, I think, was what we called the Joint Work Plan for the Future of US-Taiwan Defense Relations. It used something called strategy to task analysis, which ran, which you have a vision statement, 10, 15 years from now, and the whole process takes a year. To be able to have two sides come down and actually come out with very, very specific wording about what is the ideal state?

Mark Stokes: Then you have seven focus areas, and it helps move toward that vision. Then each focus area, of course, has a vision statement, achievable five to seven years, and under each focus area, goals, objectives, and actions.

Mark Stokes: Russell was still there. Did a proposal to MOFA in prospect on actually doing this joint work plan to be able to…

Mark Stokes: Ideal vision obviously. It’s a normal relationship. It’s not to support Taiwan independence. You can separate that. US should not support or oppose. It’s to normalize the relationship.

Audrey Tang: Taiwan as an island has been independent for 8,500 years anyway.

Mark Stokes: Government, maybe 1911. It fundamentally changed with the first direct presidential election. Instinctively, this is a US policy issue. How to articulate that to people is really the challenge.

Audrey Tang: We’re basically building the imperatives where people feel it’s normal to participate in such large scale conversations. We also work with the Chulalongkorn University in Thailand. Some of these technologies are finding its way, especially the disinformation-countering ones, to the Thai society. We train the Philippines people.

Russell Hsiao: NDI?

Audrey Tang: Mm-hmm. It’s the civil society gathering I think from the NDI, part of the NED system. We work quite closely with the NDI/IRI systems to popularize this kind of culture and tools. After all, we didn’t invent this ourselves. The software that I just showed was written in Seattle…

Mark Stokes: [laughs]

Audrey Tang: …by a bunch of occupiers.

Mark Stokes: What is it called?

Audrey Tang: P-O-L-I-S. I wrote columns on “New York Times”, “Economist” about the use of this tool. “Wired” also recently by a friend.

Audrey Tang: It’s getting some interest, especially in the EU, for the newer, more Internet-savvy parties to use the same software, the same approach, and Canada as well, Singapore too. I think US haven’t been using it in any large scale. The largest scale is in Bowling Green, Kentucky which they use to run a virtual town hall.

Audrey Tang: But all of these are coordinated in the sense that we contribute our conversations and our techniques, like the Canadian contributes the bilingual environment back to this system which we then use for the AIT Digital Dialogue, so people can participate in Mandarin or in English.

Mark Stokes: When you say digital dialogue, there was a conference here maybe a month ago on some digital issue. I forgot what it is. There were representatives from Burma that came. Does this sound familiar? It was an international conference on digital…

Audrey Tang: Issues?

Mark Stokes: Yes.

Audrey Tang: I haven’t any…

Mark Stokes: On the Philippines issue, just reason why that’s of interest, I’m going there tomorrow, Manila.

Audrey Tang: Cool.

Mark Stokes: More on the security front but try out a little dialogue to try to get that going with the Philippines. I just wasn’t sure what else was going on already between Taiwan and the Philippines.

Audrey Tang: I think we mostly showed that how do we approach these issues for both disinformation-countering part and the listening at scale part, which again reinforces each other. I’m sure not whether they adopt any of these two techniques. It’s a new relationship.

Audrey Tang: We run far more workshops in Thailand. I think three workshops now in Bangkok. When we run the workshops, I think all the major parties people are there. They’re all quite interested.

Mark Stokes: Our institute has a program. It’s actually State Department Democracy, DRL funded. I get some funding from them and NED. The DRL one is of course rehabilitation of political prisoners. It’s support for LGTBQ rights. Burma’s one of the members. As well, NED side is looking at Chinese political warfare infiltration. It’s a big problem.

Mark Stokes: The Philippines in interesting because there’s been I would say credible information that it has been a long target of again PLA in terms of infiltration targeting the military. I’m just flabbergasted because a lot goes on with Japan trilateral. I just haven’t seen anything that’s been initiated in terms of trilateral context between US, Taiwan, and the Philippines.

Audrey Tang: That’s right. Japan is very active, as you said. The coined the term Indo-Pacific in the first place and also joined the GCTF trilateral. We visit Japan quite a few times too.

Russell Hsiao: Minister, if I may, I think one of the things that you’ve highlighted in the course of the initiatives that your government is undertaking is how you are utilizing technology to promote national cohesion in Taiwan. I think that’s an important element that is often missing in our discussion about having a better understanding. What are the metrics of national cohesion?

Russell Hsiao: I do think that is one of the most important aspect of being able to counter the overarching objectives and purposes of…

Audrey Tang: Which is to sow discord.

Russell Hsiao: …is to sow discord, exacerbate social, political tensions, polarize society. National cohesion I think is a natural antidote to those type of malign activities.

Russell Hsiao: Oftentimes when we talk about technology, we often point to the discord that we find in the online space constantly because it’s been utilized in such a manner by authoritarian governments to sow discord in open society.

Audrey Tang: Even though they call it “harmony”…

Audrey Tang: Quite ironic.

Russell Hsiao: I suppose my question is whether, in your efforts now, have you been able to come to establishing some metrics in terms of how to measure the effectiveness of your countermeasures that you’re undertaking to use technology in promoting national cohesion?

Audrey Tang: Definitely.

Russell Hsiao: If you could share some of that because I think, as researchers, metrics are important so we can start looking at how do we come to a common understanding about these oftentimes quite complex concepts as well as measuring our effectiveness in dealing with what I think we’ve identified as problems and challenges.

Russell Hsiao: If you have any thoughts on that in terms of what have you seen and observed and you can share with us that you can hope better inform our analysis about these issues.

Audrey Tang: I think fundamentally the most important metric that I look at is the availability of broadband, at least 10 mbps, as a human right to people in the indigenous, rural, and offshore areas. That is the foundation of literally every other metric that I’m going to share with you.

Audrey Tang: Currently, we’re at 98 percent, meaning that broadband as human right campaign promise by Dr. Tsai is almost completely a reality.

Audrey Tang: For the two percent which is 3,000 meters high or higher mostly, the Minister of Interior also promised to use the helicopters, the black box, that when they’re running drill, training missions to help build repeaters and telecommunication towers that fill in that remaining two percent.

Audrey Tang: We do this even fanatical commitment to broadband as a human right because we know that unless we have broadband as a human right and very affordable, like 16 Euros per month for unlimited data actually, a world’s first due to some coincidences…

Audrey Tang: In any case, because of that, everybody becomes not only a reader or viewer of traditional media, like TV and radio, that enable one person to speak to millions but everybody can, just with a phone, become a broadcasting station, become a YouTuber as we say here at no increasing marginal cost because unlimited broadband is free, long as you pay 16 USD per month.

Audrey Tang: The point here is that if the society have the haves and have-nots or the broadband and the narrowband, which only look at livestream meetings in a very compressed or asynchronous way, then the feeling of polity divides very quickly once you introduce anything about digital participation.

Audrey Tang: But because it’s radically inclusive, so we can say with a good conscience that digital democracy is complementing democracy rather than sacrificing people in the rural and indigenous and remote areas, that’s the most important metric and we’re continuing to make good on that broadband as human right promise.

Audrey Tang: On top of that, I would say the main metric is unique visitors to our national participation platform, which is join.gov.tw, unlike in the US and other jurisdictions where petitions is one website, like We the People, regulatory pre-announcement, and other, like regulation.gov.

Audrey Tang: Participatory budget yet another, probably at the state and township level, and the National Auditing Office on yet another. I’m not sure there is a equivalent in the US, although with the open government plan, they’re setting up one. In any case, all these full lifecycle of policymaking are often distributed in very different agencies and in very different engagement patterns, some institutionalized, some rather ad hoc.

Audrey Tang: In Taiwan, everything is institutionalized and in the same website called join.gov.tw which has 10 million unique visitors out of 23 million residents, a large portion. That’s the second quantitative measure that I keep a close eye on. On top of it, I have two more details if you’re interested.

Audrey Tang: I’ll say one more which is the engagement rate across geographic and age groups. Fortunately, we’re finding municipal and rural engagement rates do not differ. This is a really good testament to the two underlying numbers that it really enabled more inclusive policymaking.

Audrey Tang: The age groups, the most active ones, are around 15 years old and 65 years old, which is reasonable considering they have more time on their hands, of course.

Audrey Tang: Also, for the 15-years-olds, there really is no other institutionalized way to participate in politics, to set the agenda. They don’t even have voting right. As a 15-year-old, back when I was 15 and started my own first company dropping out of junior high, I feel almost that the Internet was the only way for me to exercise the right to participate. There is no difference for today’s 15-years-olds.

Audrey Tang: With the most courageous and creative petitions, often around environmental sustainability and human right, are done by people who are 15 or 16 years old and supported by the wisdom of the 65 who care more about the next generation anyway at their age. I think these two are two pillars that support the digital participation of policies.

Audrey Tang: I can go on to two more measures, but I think these three are pillars.

Michael Mazza: Can I ask you about your first point about broadband?

Michael Mazza: A colleague and I wrote a paper, which Russell published, about interference in Taiwan’s politics ahead of last November’s elections. One of the things we discuss and we heard repeatedly during trips here was that both the social media environment and the traditional media environment were conducive to disinformation campaigns and also accidental misinformation going viral as well.

Michael Mazza: When you say it’s a goal to essentially extend broadband to 100 percent of the population, I don’t want to suggest that that shouldn’t be a goal, but you’re also giving malign actors access to more voters, to more citizens.

Michael Mazza: How do you extend access to broadband, make sure that more and more of your citizens can access social media and traditional media while also working to make sure that they can be responsible users and consumers of media?

Audrey Tang: We include that in K-12 education curriculum and lifelong education, of course. Before I was digital minister three years ago, I was part of the K-12 curriculum committee. We saw that the traditional model of “media literacy” is outdated.

Audrey Tang: What we’re teaching now to the teachers are what we call media competencies. Meaning that, instead of being readers and viewer, the students are learning become producers essentially, becoming their own broadcast stations, learning to participate in group that cares about fact-checking, that cares about source-checking.

Audrey Tang: That participate in the collaborative efforts such a Cofacts, which fact-checks every reported voluntarily message on the Line messaging system all the way all the way to the presidential election fact-check project which is done by a dozen of institutional and social media with almost a thousand contributors. Just typing in all the public speeches by the three presidential candidates and fact-check each one of them semi-automatically.

Audrey Tang: It’s a really good crowdsourced fact-checking exercise. The point here is that soon as people learn how journalism works, they held themself to a higher standard.

Audrey Tang: Even the very elderly people when they learn about the idea of framing and things like that, they become I wouldn’t say expert but at least para-experts on seeing through the disinformation campaigns. It’s much more convincing if they share these insights with their friends than the government or ministers say that something about the institutional media.

Audrey Tang: I would say if you don’t have broadband as a human right, it doesn’t mean that institutional media doesn’t find its way to their homes. It means that they spend more of their attention on institutional media, which may or may not be a good thing.

Audrey Tang: Of course, there we’re also diversifying with the public TV, opening up the Taigi channel of participant. That I think while important, and I fully support that minister of culture, mission the future is definitely in digital media.

Mark Stokes: When it comes to media literacy, I should be more educated on this than I am.

Michael Mazza: More literate.

Mark Stokes: More literate. Yeah, I should be more literate. There’s a basic philosophy in the old days. If a report out of Hong Kong, for example, talking about China, PLA, if that report was 70 percent correct, that’s a good report. In other words, you can have a report that 70 percent accurate, 30 percent is going to get things wrong. That’s a good one. If you someone who is 80 percent, then, wow, that’s really good.

Mark Stokes: Media literacy I assume also includes naturally like in Taiwan the “China Times” naturally they’re going to have a perception bias. Same for “Liberty Times”. Same in the US. I switch back and forth between CNN and Fox News. I get a kick out of that. It’s obvious the spins that they put on.

Mark Stokes: People generally aren’t objective. You’re always going to have some subjective assessments of how you perceive things. That reflects that way in reporting. I would assume that that’s also part of a media literacy. If you’re really interested in an issue and you want to get to objective reality, you’ve just got to go to different sources to get different perspectives.

Audrey Tang: Exactly. A large part of it is because we’re talking about K-12, meaning they’re the 1st grade or the 7th grade or the 10th grade for that matter, which rolls out this year, is that the teachers start becoming designated bearer of standardized answers.

Audrey Tang: I think that is the one thing that allows disinformation to piggyback on this instinctual belief that there is one single standard answer and it’s in the teacher’s head. You get good score by scoring well on that linear metric, which I never understood that, being a junior high dropout. But I hear that people get screened on that, especially on the senior high level back in the bad old days.

Audrey Tang: Nowadays with the new curriculum, the teacher is just a co-learner. The teacher may very well have their own bias. The teacher may actually fail to see things, like the remaining 20 percent or 30 percent as you just said. It’s OK because the teacher’s going to make this transparent to the students.

Audrey Tang: It’s not just critical thinking. It’s also creative thinking, making their own constellations from the existing constellations of viewpoints in a very transcultural manner. That is how we designed the new curriculum.

Mark Stokes: This is going off-topic a little bit. One of the long-term goals has been look at Taiwan and, in the international community, what makes Taiwan unique. How is it different from other places? There’s a lot that one can come up in terms of mountain ranges, susceptibility to natural disasters, probably the most significant military threat. There’s all kinds of physical attributes of Taiwan that make it unique.

Audrey Tang: Social also, the pride.

Mark Stokes: On the social aspect though, social psychology, because we look at public perceptions of different things in psychology in general, I just wonder what the effect has been about the lack of…I just wonder how Taiwan people when you can’t even get entrance into the United Nations…

Audrey Tang: I can.

Mark Stokes: You have ROC passport.

Audrey Tang: Using a robot. They don’t check passport for robots.

Michael Mazza: [laughs]

Mark Stokes: That’s innovative.

Mark Stokes: What effect does this have on social psychology? If you’re in junior high or something and you have one kid who’s just not accepted, it’s like, “You don’t exist.” It just seems like that would have a big effect on a social psychology. I just wondered has there ever been a study done on this?

Audrey Tang: Quite a few. I think that’s exactly why the MOFA, the foreign service, for the past three years now has settled on this Taiwan Can Help slogan. What we’ve found is that…This is not entirely a MOFA design I must confess. Only this part is MOFA design. It’s part of my name card.

Audrey Tang: What we say here essentially is that we’re a good friend to anyone who are trying to achieve the sustainable goals. Unlike pretty much any of our nearby jurisdictions, we have pretty good goals achievement in terms of human development index but also pretty good experience of coming from a lesser developed part in Egypt the 17 goals to now which is were we’re doing very well.

Audrey Tang: Every year we highlight different part of the goals. This year, we highlight climate change and life underwater. These are the two colors.

Audrey Tang: I think MOFA chose this slogan to show that we’re helping regardless. The international organizations if they are stuck in the Millennium Development Goals space of being multilateral, they systemically overlook, for example, people who are going to have their habitat disrupted because of climate change.

Audrey Tang: The multilaterals, especially the minilaterals, it’s not helping on their regard. I will not cite any particular jurisdictions. The people who are having their habitats disrupted may form a major groups. That is a new way where multi-stakeholders and the UN is also looking into. Everything is becoming a hybrid.

Audrey Tang: You have a multilateral core, but a part of it, a minilateral part, is willing to talk to more stakeholder groups. They become multi-stakeholder-ish.

Audrey Tang: The Internet Governance Forum is a perfect example, where you can see many other forums are now taking this multi-stakeholder plus multilateral co-governance approach. While you correctly point out that Taiwan do not get a seat here, Taiwan gets plenty of seats here.

Audrey Tang: When we say “Taiwan Can Help”, we’re saying that people who we have helped with and build a mutual helping relationship in this part, are all free to just carry a iPad or a robot to a UN meeting, and I’ll just attach to them. I’ve done this many times. I think the PRC offered token resistance on the first live stream try…

Mark Stokes: How do you do this?

Audrey Tang: …afterwards, they just don’t care anymore.

Mark Stokes: How do you do that?

Audrey Tang: Very easily. Say there is a walking robot thing, and they just brought it to the UN Geneva building because it’s just a equipment for videoconferencing, they don’t check for passport for robots, obviously. When it’s my turn to speak, they just switch it on, and I start speaking here from Taipei.

Audrey Tang: Literally, they’re watching a movie. Even though it’s recorded a second ago, they’re watching a movie, and whatever I said is on the record, and attributed to me.

Audrey Tang: When the PRC people protested, saying, “The UN should not be a platform for Taiwan independence,” they had to change the transcript to say, “The PRC delegate to the UN Geneva said, the UN should never be a platform for not Chinese tightening, not independence…”

Audrey Tang: …which is of course, according to the UN rule, that’s what they must do.

Audrey Tang: It highlights this issue in a very paradoxical way. I’ve been doing this for many years now.

Michael Mazza: Who brings it in?

Audrey Tang: I think it was as MOFA worker that has two passports, a contractor. As long as you have another passport, you can go in.

Mark Stokes: Tsai Ing-wen, I believe, and Joseph Wu gave video statements…

Audrey Tang: That’s right.

Mark Stokes: …live feed in the conferences. I think GTI did one.

Russell Hsiao: We had a recorded video remark…

Audrey Tang: Yeah, we use that technique very regularly, and we have a really good reason. We say it reduces carbon footprint by reducing air travel, which is true. [laughs]

Mark Stokes: It’s a move in the right direction. In an ideal world, yes, it’s symbolic. Of course, symbolism has a substance.

Audrey Tang: It says Taiwan can help on all the regards.

Mark Stokes: One of the concerns, in my view, coming back to the theme of our visit here, is political warfare. In my view, the best way to counter Communist Party political warfare…

Audrey Tang: Is to build…

Mark Stokes: …is play in a different playing field. You have to figure out what their strategy is, in my view, because they feel threatened. They’re very insecure.

Mark Stokes: The best way to do it is, I’m not saying this is propaganda, you hit mantras. You repeat the same thing over and over again. “Taiwan, under its current ROC Constitution is an independent sovereign state.” There’s a difference between recognition of that.

Mark Stokes: Other mantras, “The status quo in the Taiwan Strait is the existence of two legitimate governments,” and keep hitting this to be able to go directly after the core of what Beijing…

Audrey Tang: That’s what Dr. Tsai has been doing very consistently, since Hong Kong, even more so.

Mark Stokes: From the US side, though, I’m really not that worried about the Taiwan side, with one exception. That exception is, from the US side, there’s more things we can do to help promote a united front within Taiwan or a more common vision between…the extremes are going to be hard, but at least within, for example, the traditional KMT, traditional DPP.

Mark Stokes: My concern is that we’ve alienated a lot of the KMT types.

Audrey Tang: Not me.

Mark Stokes: What’s that?

Audrey Tang: The U.S., you mean? The U.S. alienated the KMT?

Mark Stokes: Of course, this is viewing as a binary sense, some kind old cold warrior, the side of a liberal democracy, representative democracy versus authoritarian autocratic systems. If you view these things in this way, then it’s important that Taiwan is at a critical ally, probably the most important ally that the free world has, because of its position.

Mark Stokes: Just with the KMT choosing to align themselves a lot more, identifying more with communist party perspectives and growing to some extent anti-Americanism, to some extent, almost loss of hope at the United States. To me it’s just somewhat concerning.

Audrey Tang: I’m non-partisan, I don’t really care about parties.

Audrey Tang: However, as an objective observer, it’s true that the DPP is seen as more pro-US interest, obviously. I wouldn’t say that average KMT followers are anti-American though.

Mark Stokes: Eric Chu made this point pretty clear.

Audrey Tang: And Terry Kuo when he was still running for the KMT, also made all those points pretty clear. Simon Chang, I think, also would prefer liberal democracy over any communist rule any day in Taiwan. After Hong Kong, of course Mayor Han also said, “One country two systems over my dead body.”

Audrey Tang: I would say before Hong Kong, I might worry about the same thing you’re worrying, but after Hong Kong it’s now a very unified point, like when the WSJ, the “Wall Street Journal” interviewed mayor Han about Hong Kong and so-on, he totally supported real election of the head of Hong Kong, as part of the five demands. That’s where we’re at right now after Hong Kong.

Russell Hsiao: Minister, if I may bring the conversation back to technology, because this is clearly your forte. You’ve spoken very eloquently about the empowering aspect of technology, and the Internet especially for its ability to be able to give a voice to people-but that voice isn’t equally distributed.

Russell Hsiao: Obviously, you’re highlighting this in Taiwan in terms of “haves” and “haves not,”” but there’s a huge “haves” and “haves-nots” in the world as well.

Russell Hsiao: Increasingly what we’re seeing is that, especially with the closed authoritarian governments, they’re closing their Internet. While at the same time for open society, trying to keep the Internet open, how sustainable do you think this kind of arrangement is, where there is an open Internet and a closed Internet? Some theorists have called the…

Audrey Tang: The Balkanization.

Russell Hsiao: …the Balkanization of the Internet, or the fragmentation of the Internet. What are your thoughts about that trajectory? Are we on that trajectory?

Russell Hsiao: What can open societies do to again, ensure that the Internet does empower not only the people in our socities, as we should certainly protect the freedoms we enjoy in open societies, but to help those who are less fortunate and can also access and benefit from the empowering aspect of the Internet that has helped fuel so much openness and freedom in our societies?

Russell Hsiao: Do you have any thoughts on the Balkanization of the Internet, and how you see the long-term development of the Internet, for instance, as someone whose life is dedicated to technological empowerment, and things like that?

Audrey Tang: Balkanization happens on the tactical and the strategic levels. The tactical level is the everyday operation of the Great Firewall and the Great Cannon, for that matter. The strategy-level is establishing Internet with PRC characteristics as a new norm, and a viable alternative norm. These are two very different things. They really shouldn’t be discussed as kind of one thing.

Audrey Tang: On the tactical level, I’m cautiously optimistic because of two things. First, the PRC have never cut access to GitHub, and GitHub is kind of the cannery. If they cut access to GitHub, it means that…

Audrey Tang: GitHub is where all the cutting-edge AI and open source and technology research happens. It is a social network run by Microsoft for everybody to relinquish their copyright and patents so that people can build upon ideas, called the open-source movement.

Audrey Tang: If the PRC cuts itself from GitHub, it means that they are basically signing themself away from the open access for the scientific research and technology community. They’re not only not contributing back, they are not even participating in the conversation.

Audrey Tang: GitHub hosts many projects that highlights the structural flaws of the PRC, including the labor conditions, including the names of the family no X related to party, power, and procurement. A lot of information there that they would otherwise ban access to.

Audrey Tang: So far, they have not banned access to it, because whenever they even think about doing that, their science and technology communities revolt. It’s just impossible to participate in science without getting access to GitHub. A lot of even mathematicians are putting their reproducible work assets on that single website. That’s the one thing that I watch.

Audrey Tang: The other thing is the Great Cannon which the Great Firewall has a mode that can distribute it, the workload of denying a website service. They try this. If you search for Great Cannon GitHub, you will find that they’ve done this a few years ago to GitHub to just try to see whether they can exert pressure on that website.

Audrey Tang: Recently, a couple weeks ago, they used the same tactic to LIHKG which is one of the main coordination points for the Anti-ELAB Hong Kong movement and utterly unsuccessful.

Audrey Tang: It means that, in both its censorship and its offensive capabilities, the Great Firewall as of now is not a 100 percent effective tool for tactical organization. I would say it’s maybe just a five percent effective tool, not effective. That’s the tactic.

Audrey Tang: The more worrying part, of course, is the strategy part where they’re trying to do export as part of “one belt, one road” that authoritarian environment of the public Internet may be a better idea for people in power because they face less criticism from the freedom of the press from the opposition parties and so on. That is, of course, the whole package.

Audrey Tang: They’re saying, if you install the Golden Shield software, then your political culture will become much more “harmonious.” Unfortunately, it takes a lot of creativity on the Great Firewall site to co-evolve with the civil society’s various tools to circumvent that.

Audrey Tang: I still remember when the Great Firewall was not great at all, when it was first built. We were working on ways to circumvent this. It was ridiculously easy back then. Of course, both side co-evolved. It takes a huge amount of budget, personnel, and creativity to go into maintaining Great Firewall in the face of this almost generative adversarial [laughs] network that tries to get information in and out.

Audrey Tang: The jurisdictions they partner with, and I will not name names, even though they may have access to the latest snapshot of the software lacks the operational capability to co-evolve with their civil society’s ways to circumvent that.

Audrey Tang: By and large, I would say it’s not very successful when they’re exporting that norm overseas even for authoritarian jurisdictions that are more susceptible to this kind of technological assistance.

Audrey Tang: Of course, all these trends are continuing to evolve. I would not rule out, for example, with quantum or other new technological breakthrough, that some of the insurmountable problems that the Great Firewall run into may actually have a technological solution that massively reduce the operational cost required to run it. I’m not ruling out that possibility. As of this moment, I’m cautiously optimistic.

Russell Hsiao: That’s very reassuring.

Michael Mazza: Thank you so much for having us. It was a really fascinating conversation.

Mark Stokes: You formed your first company in junior high?

Audrey Tang: Sure.

Mark Stokes: Wow. I wish I did that.

Audrey Tang: I’m being very, very objective when I co-created K-12 curriculum because I’m not subject to any of this curricula ideologies. I was in three kindergartens, six primary schools, and one year of junior high before dropping out. None of these martial law era education had any effect on my brain, which is why I mostly look at the blue and green as just 2 colors in the 17 colors of the sustainable goals.

Mark Stokes: But both colors try to paint the other in the darkest hue possible.

Audrey Tang: I don’t care.

Mark Stokes: That’s why it’s, in my view, best to come up with the lowest denominator, one or two sides to agree. That has to do with just a need for legitimacy.

Audrey Tang: I just wrote a poem last week actually that talks something about that: “Swirling ocean, beautiful islands: a transcultural republic of citizens.”

Audrey Tang: I wouldn’t say it’s a lowest common denominator; it’s more like a mutually reinforced vision. It’s very similar to a recent remark about neolithic age, the breakaway in a geographic sense, that I made. It is basically reasserting the ecosystem as the protagonist and human beings as supportives, and the fact that everybody in Taiwan need to form their own constellation out of their cultural identity not limited to the single culture, whatever culture that is, that we’ve brought up on.

Audrey Tang: This also very neatly reflects on the name of the country, which is literally…

Mark Stokes: Taiwan?

Audrey Tang: …a citizen’s republic between flowers.