Audrey Tang: You’re not publishing the video, right? Just the text?

Roman Winkelhahn: No. We are publishing the article. We are informed that you will record a video, and then publish the…

Audrey Tang: Yeah, and make a transcript. We will not publish the video either, which is why I’m not wearing makeups…

Martin Koelling: [laughs]

Roman Winkelhahn: If you agree, I would like to record the audio as a backup for the notes.

Audrey Tang: Of course.

Roman Winkelhahn: Thank you. I will start…

Audrey Tang: We have started recording already… If you have the third or the fourth, it’s called resilience.

Martin Koelling: [laughs]

Roman Winkelhahn: We can first start by thanking you for taking the time to give us this interview. We will be talking about Taiwan’s satellites project that you announced. We’ll be talking a bit about your space industry, and your Internet strategy. I’m sure our colleague will be here soon. Then, we can start discussing things.

Audrey Tang: Fine. We can…

Martin Koelling: One moment. Good. I’m trying to set it up. Google Meet is here. There are so many services these days, I’m losing track. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: Wouldn’t it be nice if people can call each other just like we can send emails across platforms?

Roman Winkelhahn: Right.

Martin Koelling: Yeah. As long as everybody has an Apple, it’s easy, you use FaceTime.

Audrey Tang: The Europeans passed a law that says instant message starting a year or so from now. Then group text and then video need to work across all the large platforms, like type C in the USB. That’s going to be a trend.

Martin Koelling: Let’s hope. Maybe we should start then. It’s already four minutes in.

Roman Winkelhahn: One second. I just got a message from R Quick.

Martin Koelling: Maybe he’s trying to get in.

Roman Winkelhahn: He’ll be joining. I sent him the link again. Maybe we can start and then he’ll be here.

Audrey Tang: We have the recording, so it’s OK to go back to the recording if he arrives late.

Roman Winkelhahn: [laughs] Great. Minister Tang, again, thanks so much for taking the time. In September, you announced…Oh, there’s our colleague from New York. Hi, Felix.

Audrey Tang: Greetings. Hello.

Felix Holtermann: Hello, Audrey. Sorry, I was in the wrong meeting.

Audrey Tang: No, it’s OK. It’s OK. We’re in the future, so.

Felix Holtermann: Good morning from New York.

Roman Winkelhahn: In September, you announced plans for Taiwan’s satellite strategy. You mentioned Ukraine, and you mentioned what Starlink, the success of Starlink had in Ukraine with Ukraine’s military.

Roman Winkelhahn: We would like to start by the motivation that’s behind this announcement you made in September, and also the political context that we’re talking about here. Especially if we’re looking at Mainland China and the threat you’re facing from there, are you expecting an invasion anytime soon? Is there any particular time series thinking of talking about within the government?

Audrey Tang: You mean like earthquakes. We always must prepare for one instant ready at any given time, but earthquakes doesn’t give us a lot of advanced warnings.

Audrey Tang: From the perspective of national security, we drew upon Ukraine experience in resisting Russia’s brutal war of aggression. MODA, Ministry of Digital Affairs, understand that we must maintain high quality and real time communication in the face of all hazards.

Audrey Tang: Actually, in Taiwan, we had an earthquake that cuts the submarine cables. It’s not just human made disasters. Natural disasters can also impact real time communication.

Audrey Tang: In all hazards in order to safeguard our democracy and the command structure to recovery work also, by ensuring accurate messaging is delivered to the people and the international community through the work of correspondents or journalists, then this is necessary. There’s really no alternative to broadband communication.

Audrey Tang: Imagine, when Kyiv was under assault, and we’re all refreshing our phones to see the latest live coverage from here, independent and international media, if you simply do not have broadband connection there, then all we will get is probably deep fakes, probably Russian propaganda, probably all sorts of things that satisfy people’s curiosity but does not lead to actual meaningful action.

Audrey Tang: Broadband connection is already a human right in Taiwan, but even more doubly so in the hazard times.

Roman Winkelhahn: You just mentioned the deep fakes and the fake news that people might be confronted with in case the communication infrastructure in Taiwan gets damaged in case of an invasion. Before we start about the whole software and information part, we’d like to talk about the hardware that needs to be installed to build up this backbone of communication that you announced.

Roman Winkelhahn: What are the concrete plans that you were thinking of when you were announcing the testing trails for the satellites, the US$18 million testing trails that you mentioned?

Audrey Tang: It’s actually following upon a previous proof of concept very successful already in Hsinchu City with the fire service to connect mobile 5G telecom mini towers. By mobile, I don’t just mean the cell phone is mobile. The tower itself is mobile, is mounted on a fire service, ambulance car, and so on, a firefighter’s truck.

Audrey Tang: The idea is that if there’s a severe fire that destroys the landlines, the fiber optics, or even the telecom towers, the power generators in an area, the firefighters can simply drive their truck nearby and connect to the mid Earth orbit satellites that’s from SES Global, a Luxembourgian French company, and then deliver real time broadcasting, as well as video conference with the dispatch center, with the command center to fight the fire and also lets the journalists have real time video feed.

Audrey Tang: Even if the fixed networks, submarine cables, all those software interruption, we must maintain continuity of communication, so heterogeneity. That’s to say a diverse plurality of hardware configuration, that is a must.

Audrey Tang: You ask about the investment. We incorporate, of course, experience from that small proof of concept and want to scale it through €‎17 million over the next couple of years to more than 700 satellite receivers around Taiwan. Some of them may be mobile, also mounted on, I don’t know, boats, trucks, or even kites and drones I’ve heard.

Audrey Tang: The other ones are, of course fixed. All these satellite receivers will help to expand into what we call three dimension — land, sea, and the air — for communication, so various networks can support each other and strengthen resilience.

Roman Winkelhahn: Martin, please.

Martin Koelling: How difficult is the integration? I know that for 6G, everybody is talking about three dimensionality of the Internet. Now, you are trying it with 5G.

Audrey Tang: With 5G technology, yes.

Martin Koelling: How difficult at the current time to basically integrate the different levels?

Audrey Tang: We’re very fortunate that the Taiwanese companies, such as Pegatron, have extensive experience in the O RAN. That’s the open RAN configuration of 5G. The end goal, of course, is to manage this plurality, this heterogeneity, just like an extended WiFi network. That’s the goal.

Audrey Tang: No matter, whether it’s actually mid Earth orbit, low Earth orbit, cloud computing, and so on, we can still view it logically as a coherence network that happens just to choose the transport layer, the link layer that still exists. For the service providers, the goal is so that they can continue to deliver the services without even pausing to reconfigure. That is the goal.

Roman Winkelhahn: We’re not talking about 700 satellites, we’re talking about 700 receiver stations, like the one in [Mandarin] . My question now is, the receiver stations, what part in constructing them will Taiwan play and where, for example, will there have to be knowledge imported from external companies or states?

Roman Winkelhahn: What about the satellites? Are there up there already? Will they have to be launched? Who will launch them? The whole hardware question. It’s going to be 700…

Audrey Tang: Receivers.

Roman Winkelhahn: Receivers, right?

Audrey Tang: Yeah.

Roman Winkelhahn: Taiwan will build them?

Audrey Tang: We’re willing to collaborate with any service provider meeting our cybersecurity criteria. For example, in the Xinju fire service, there’s local companies like Pegatron. There’s also Wave In, also Microsoft, and so on, under the direction of the National Development Council here.

Audrey Tang: It is OK if the team is also heterogeneous. Meaning, some Taiwanese and some overseeing, and so on, as long as cybersecurity concerns are taken care of. A mix of products from various manufacturers, that’s entirely fine.

Martin Koelling: How far did you already develop the specifications?

Audrey Tang: Mm hmm.

Martin Koelling: They are basically finished already?

Audrey Tang: For the service part, for the video conferencing we’re having now, and the sharing to the journalists, and so on, that’s standard cloud collaboration experiences. Those specifications are relatively stable.

Audrey Tang: You can imagine, we’re now using Google Meet. Something like Google Workspace is the human visible layer of the specification. That is quite constant. We look at all the fire drills, typhoon drills. Taiwan has not had a typhoon for quite a while now, but certainly earthquakes, and so on.

Audrey Tang: Whatever the command center wants from this hazard response team is the standard application set, we’re going to support. We’re planning for an even more serious hazard of a human made aspect that cut all the [laughs] submarine cables. The application level is the same specification.

Martin Koelling: For the receivers?

Audrey Tang: As long as they can deliver the service level agreements on both the cybersecurity and bandwidth and latency, we can mix and match. It doesn’t have to be 700 or fixed on the same point using the same vendor space. We can reconfigure it as the demand also changes, and also as new players enter the market.

Audrey Tang: As we know, in low Earth orbit, there are a lot of new players now in the market. It doesn’t mean that all 700 need to belong to the same band or the same provider. They can alternate between the providers. For example, the same fire truck can have two receivers. One for the mid Earth and one for lower Earth. That’s also imaginable.

Roman Winkelhahn: We’re talking about providers that do have a convenient network of satellites up there in the lower Earth orbit. They’re basically two, and those are Starlink and OneWeb. Does any of those companies meet your safety requirements? Are you in consultation with any of those companies?

Audrey Tang: We understand that just like how SES Global work with Microsoft Azure Space, with Wave In, with Pegatron, they’re not isolated providers.

Audrey Tang: They rather join some of our local telecoms or local IT providers, even local cybersecurity teams to form a — was it assemblage, recollage? — [laughs] a heterogeneous talented team that provides on the different layers to deliver our services.

Audrey Tang: From my understanding, such initial talks are, well, continuous. There’s already a lot of talks now to figure out specifications, and so on. Because our project doesn’t start until early next year, we have not formally accepted submissions for application.

Roman Winkelhahn: You already started the submission phase. Is that correct? You started…

Audrey Tang: For the commercial operation. For commercial operation. For providing services for payment for business or citizens use. What I’m talking about, what we were talking about in the previous questions was on this all hazards resilience response plan, which is not a commercial operation.

Roman Winkelhahn: I see.

Audrey Tang: We already, as you witnessed, opened up submissions, applications for the commercial operation part. The commercial operation works on a different service level provider. Certainly, it’s planned to, for example, satisfy the need for very rural areas. For the 0.9 percent of household that’s not yet covered by 4G, and so on.

Audrey Tang: Maybe that’s their business case, or for — I don’t know — video conferencing on a boat, a yacht cruise, or on an airplane. That’s not the scenario we’re talking about when we talk about all hazards resilience. That starts a little bit later, early next year.

Roman Winkelhahn: All right.

Felix Holtermann: Am I getting it right? Sorry. To understand, am I getting it right? The call for tenders for the satellite system itself, for the technical side, will start in 2023, not now.

Audrey Tang: Early next year, yes. For commercial operators to get a license to operate LEO or MEO for a commercial offering, that application period starts now.

Felix Holtermann: If we talk about the other call for tender for the beginning of next year, which companies would you like to see to apply here? Are we talking about SpaceX? With Starlink, they have the, perhaps, biggest experience in this field. China is watching that quite closely, if we’re not mistaken. Do you have other companies in mind in this sphere? Who would you like to see to apply?

Audrey Tang: As many as possible that satisfies our cybersecurity requirements. The reason why is that the more heterogeneous, more plural our configuration is, the less likely that all of them will be taken over at the same time.

Felix Holtermann: Have you already spoken to SpaceX or other companies in this field?

Audrey Tang: From what I understand, our local telecoms and technology companies, there’s already a continuous conversation going on after a lot of the receiver equipment, and so on, is manufacturing in Taiwan. It is very natural for them to have continuous conversation.

Audrey Tang: As I mentioned, as MODA, we’ve not yet opened up the public procurement or tender process for the all hazards response yet, so we did not have any official submissions.

Martin Koelling: Looking at the commercial project, I wonder how many different projects do you have. One is the hazard part, right? Then, you have the commercial part.

Audrey Tang: That’s it.

Martin Koelling: These two? Did you already receive bids for the commercial part?

Audrey Tang: The commercial is not an exclusive process. Any operator that satisfy their requirements and willing to pay the spectrum use fee can operate here. It’s not a competitive process, anyone can submit. The current round opens until, I think, Christmas or something, [laughs] end of December.

Audrey Tang: Then we will see the first batch, how large it is, how many operators, or maybe they’re more interested in all hazards parts, we don’t know yet. We will have more news early January.

Martin Koelling: Is this hazard part actually a backup or will it be fully integrated in the daily operations?

Audrey Tang: It will be fully integrated. As I mentioned, we want a continuous service delivery experience. When earthquakes, natural or unnatural, happens, we still have to configure our telecoms to go for free roaming, and so on. Then, it will be too late.

Audrey Tang: We want this system to not using the full bandwidth, because the latency is still a little bit higher than submarine cables. At least some bits of it must remain operational at all times, so that we can shift the payload, the traffic to that route without reconfiguring the system. That is the same configuration that Xinju experience was taking.

Martin Koelling: Are 700 receivers enough?

Audrey Tang: If we try and we see that we need more, we ask our parliament for more budget.

Martin Koelling: [laughs]

Roman Winkelhahn: When working together with those commercial companies — the smaller ones, but then also larger ones like OneWeb, for example — will Taiwan and the government ensure autonomy and independence from these companies?

Roman Winkelhahn: We’ve been talking to analysts that told us that in the Ukraine, for example, well, they said that everything Starlink does, the US government knows. I’m very sure that the political context in which Taiwan stands will need Taiwan to be more autonomous and independent when we’re talking about the actual application of these technologies.

Roman Winkelhahn: How will the government ensure that Taiwan will have the full control over the networks and the signal without interventions from these…?

Audrey Tang: …the strengths and diversity. What you’re describing is essentially called vendor lock in in our field. If you’re locked into a single vendor, where you have to like put all your eggs in the same basket, so to speak, then you’re beholding to that vendor.

Audrey Tang: Just like our submarine cables doesn’t all exit Taiwan on the same place, it’s distributed in different geographic locations precisely because of earthquakes, and the submarine cables themselves are constructed in joint partnership with different vendors and different countries.

Audrey Tang: Even if some of them suffer outages, it’s OK because the Internet is designed so that it can route around the damaged parts and still deliver a acceptable experience.

Audrey Tang: We had to tell the legislator that you will cost more. It’s not like if you just have the bare bone, lowest price bidder win, then you will end up with, I don’t know a single vendor taking over all the equipments because that’s economies of scale and they can offer a lowest bid. This is not about the lowest bid. This is about as thorough as many as possible so they don’t all fail at the same time.

Roman Winkelhahn: If we’re looking at it from a more political perspective, and less from a technological perspective, what reactions do you expect from mainland China in case you’re working together with, for example, US companies that are providing you with communication services?

Roman Winkelhahn: We know that China developed techniques to bring down Starlink satellites. There are studies, I’m sure you know them. What reactions do you expect from there, if we’re talking about the political part? Not about the technological independency but the political independency.

Audrey Tang: As I mentioned, SES Global is Luxembourg French, and every different provider is in different jurisdictions. We have local zones of public cloud provider. This is public information. Google settled in Changhua for quite a long time now. Amazon, I think in here, New Taipei City just last month. Microsoft also. All the public clouds are providing the local zones, but some of them are calling it sovereign clouds and so on.

Audrey Tang: That can still function fully, even if the submarine cables are all cut. They have to rely on some satellite, because most of the computation is in Taiwan proper. This configuration necessarily safeguards against the political contingency that you’re alluding to, because to shut us down, computation wise and communication wise, you will have to shut down essentially all the public clouds’ capability.

Audrey Tang: It’s just like our website, moda.gov.tw, is hosted both on Cloudflare and on IPFS. If you want to take our website down in a cyber attack, you’ll have to take down CloudFlare, which powers pretty much all the major social media websites, and also the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs and crypto world. To declare war on those two worlds together, I don’t know about that.

Martin Koelling: You mentioned already the big IT companies, especially the American IT companies. When I spoke to Ian Bremmer from Eurasia Group, he mentioned that, actually, the problem of Russia and also China would be that Russia now and China would have not only to fight against America, but also against the American IT industry.

Martin Koelling: What role are these big IT players play in this new age of information technology, especially when it comes to making the networks more resilient?

Audrey Tang: We are all joined in this so called zero trust architecture, or ZTA, that enabled a different configuration of cyber defense. In the old days, pre pandemic, in most of the municipal and national level government agencies, there’s this idea of an intranet.

Audrey Tang: Between the intranet and the Internet, there is this idea of a firewall. Your IT team, your MIT team, your cyber defense team will strengthen the firewall against the attack, like denial of service bots and so on, intrusions from outside, building a moat, a castle, or there’s many different metaphors. I’m sure you’re aware of these metaphors.

Audrey Tang: In zero trust architecture, there’s no intranet. There is no distinction between a firewall protected office and a non protected outer world. All the employees in my ministry have laptops. There’s no desktops around here. We sign official documents using FidO.

Audrey Tang: That’s a authentication mechanism using my fingerprint on my smartphone that checks for the integrity of my phone, my SIM card, the connection, and my fingerprint. It’s very difficult to falsify all three layers at the same time. If you only attack one layer, not only is your action initially detected very quickly, but also it’s impossible to fake the other two layers in an instant.

Audrey Tang: It makes defense much more likely to be joined by different vendors. Maybe this layer provided by Microsoft, that layer by Amazon, that layer by Google, that layer by VMware, or whatever other companies. These large IT companies, each taking care of the layer that they’re most familiar with, join us together in a joint cyber defense through ZTA, zero trust architecture.

Martin Koelling: The IT companies play a crucial role, basically, in all your plans?

Audrey Tang: An integral role, yes.

Roman Winkelhahn: If we’re talking about that many companies providing service and about this heterogenic approach to cybersecurity, what some of investments are you thinking of when thinking of installing all these different services and paying all these different providers here?

Audrey Tang: This is, of course, interoperability. Avoiding the lock ins is on the top of my mind. At any given time, on those adjacent layers, like authentication and edge, firewall, DDoS prevention, and so on — they need to talk through open interoperable standards.

Audrey Tang: Now, if we choose one vendor, and use an entire stack provided by that one vendor, then we’re locked in. We cannot switch to any different vendors. We cannot invest in open source for software solutions in some of those layers.

Audrey Tang: Because we insist on interoperability, and we never choose the same vendor for two adjacent layers. According to the four color theorem, we will only require four vendors, but anyway. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: Basically, what we’re saying is that anything can be swapped, plugged, and play. If we are not satisfied with the experience on any particular layers, we will have two vendors. Maybe one domestic and one international for that particular layer.

Audrey Tang: Depending on their performance, we will change the configuration to use this more or use that more exactly the same. As we have different fiber optic, satellite link, low Earth, mid Earth, and so on, we can ration different ratios in our daily usage. Because they’re all measured and paid by metering, [laughs] if we use it less, they earn less.

Roman Winkelhahn: Sure, but is there a certain budget already if the…? If avoiding the lock ins, is that important? There must be a budget for your ministry, for the government, that’s already put out somewhere, how you’re going to finance the whole cybersecurity project.

Audrey Tang: Sure. There’s ongoing budget to finance the cyber defense. It’s not just from the public sector. Of course, our budget is publicly disclosed, but also with the help from our semiconductor industry, which powers pretty much all the chips in those IT companies worldwide.

Audrey Tang: Whether they want to do encryption/decryption, whether they want to do advanced communication chips, and so on, chances are that they’re produced in Taiwan. A trustworthy and stable supply chain based on our strong chip industry is also a top priority.

Audrey Tang: We have a dedicated administration, the Administration for Digital Industries. It’s not just for the software industry. We’re not saying that. We’re saying digital industries, especially, for example, fab equipments. A standard led by Taiwan industry participants.

Audrey Tang: We made E187 specification, so that the fab equipment including the software, and the process, and the hardware, and so on — the operational part of technology, not just IT — including the TSMC established a joint testing laboratory for this kind of cybersecurity.

Audrey Tang: The funding comes not exclusively, or not even primarily for the SEMI E187, from the public sector, but rather from the TSMC and the TSMC supply chain.

Audrey Tang: The objective is twofold. First, to promote our high quality products. Ensure that people can compute with Taiwanese chips with confidence, that’s one. Like we say, “MIT, T for Taiwan, but also trustworthiness.” Also, the second is to strengthen our local cybersecurity practitioners and industry.

Audrey Tang: Instead of practicing on exercises, they can face a better tested scenario of the trade secret espionage. That’s also going on in parallel with the kind of cyber attacks we’re facing from the public sector. The private sector is also facing ransomware, all sort of attacks that can also serve as a proof grounds, ground of proving, in our cybersecurity industry.

Felix Holtermann: What would the overall project of building these satellites, building these ground stations, connecting them, providing Internet access in the end? How much would that cost in the end? Are we talking about a three digit million number here? Are we talking about costs in the billions?

Audrey Tang: We will find out in the next couple of years whether the 300 locations are sufficient. Especially, if some of them are mobile, then they can be relocated as needed during emergency situations. Maybe that would be sufficient, and then we will maintain those 700 points. We can perhaps discover that we need more satellite receivers.

Audrey Tang: We want to switch some of the existing very expensive land based or microwave based or submarine cable that’s easily cut, and so on, with the kind of satellite receivers that we tested with 700 locations. We may decide that we need more. If we do decide that, we will send another proposal to the parliament.

Felix Holtermann: If they are sufficient, are we then talking about a three digit million number? Are we already in the billions for such a system?

Audrey Tang: You mean to build or to maintain it?

Felix Holtermann: To build it.

Audrey Tang: Our investment to build it is Є17 million.

Roman Winkelhahn: That’s the test trial, right?

Audrey Tang: That’s the test trial. Then, to…

Felix Holtermann: I meant the whole system, not the…

Audrey Tang: Then, to make sure that it integrates well with the public service, and so on, if there’s no extra sites being constructed, then we’re talking about double digits. If we do need more satellite receivers or a different sort of configuration, then maybe more.

Felix Holtermann: I thought that the test drive is only a test drive. After the test drive, there must be a follow up, right?

Audrey Tang: Maybe. [laughs] Maybe there’s a shiny new test with a totally different technology you don’t know.

Audrey Tang: Assuming that the test drive succeeds, by downtime, probably, the commercial operators is already operating in Taiwan. It is also conceivable that some of the needs can be fulfilled by signing a service level agreement with the commercial arm, the other arm of commercial operation. That is also possible.

Felix Holtermann: Then, the public funding would remain at the Є17 million?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, but to make it operable at the same level. In short, we don’t know. We know that we must find out the answer ideally within half a year. At this moment, we don’t know yet.

Martin Koelling: Looking at the infrastructure, the space infrastructure, are the current satellite networks enough to fulfill your needs and specifications for bandwidth?

Audrey Tang: If you count bandwidth alone, then it’s already quite sufficient. It is the mid Earth orbit. It’s not about bandwidth restriction. It’s about latency restriction.

Audrey Tang: One round trip is 100 or 200 milliseconds, and that’s good enough for broadcasting. It’s less preferred for video conferencing. We can still tolerate that, but for autonomous vehicles in disaster recovery, the swarm of drones, and so on, that latency probably wouldn’t work. It depends on the scenarios, the applications that we put the test through. If you’re just talking about bandwidth alone, then bandwidth is not actually the main choke point.

Martin Koelling: Do you think that you also need to invest in an own network? Satellite networks are one part of resilience, but GPS is another. Japan for example, has basically launched over the last 20 years their own GPS network with highly precise GPS. Do you need something like this for Taiwan as well to basically complement?

Audrey Tang: We adopted a Space Development Act in January 2022. Some of the space center programs are moving toward that direction. However, that is beyond MODA. You will have to talk to the space agency.

Audrey Tang: For MODA, for the next couple of years in this all hazards branch, we understand the vast majority will probably be with existing commercial providers that are interested in this all hazard resilience plan. More than two years, then there’s more and more possibilities. You probably will have to talk to the space agency for that.

Martin Koelling: Looking at latency, are you also in talks with HubsNet, for example?

Audrey Tang: There are many configuration possibilities. Mostly, it is to make sure that the service providers find this a seamless experience.

Audrey Tang: That is the main thing we want to find out in the initial phase in the first half of next year. Whether it is possible for them to…As I mentioned, think of it as an extended WiFi network. If that is possible, then it makes new providers plug and play. You don’t care about how many providers you have, because the experience is seamless.

Roman Winkelhahn: On your National Day last month, President Tsai Ing wen mentioned that there must be more investions into the space industry, into the domestic space industry in Taiwan. You mentioned the semiconductor industry earlier.

Roman Winkelhahn: Analysts say that there is the possibility for Taiwan to scale up the semiconductor industry to become an independent space country that’s part in the global space industry, which Taiwan is not right now. What are the prospectus there if you’re looking at the potential that Taiwan has to scale up?

Audrey Tang: As I mentioned, that’s a NSTC question, the National Science and Technology Council questions. In our ministry, which is in charge of cybersecurity, we plan probably just two to four years in the future because the all hazards scenario starts becoming really unpredictable outside of that timeframe. We focus on the short and mid term.

Audrey Tang: What you’re describing is, of course, very inspiring. For that to happen, it’s probably takes more than four years, and so that will be an NSTC question.

Roman Winkelhahn: Then what your ministry is working on in the digital sphere, the cybersecurity, because another sector that we’re looking at, it’s not only the hardware, but then it’s about the software, and then you’re talking about the Internet of Things and of avoiding fake news coming from mainland China and avoiding the deep fakes by having a convenient Internet structure.

Roman Winkelhahn: If we could dig a bit deeper into that, into what you expect from a satellite network, in the serious case of, let’s say, an invasion, or as you call it an earthquake, what will the Internet do for Taiwanese citizens? What are the programs that you can launch? For example, how can you [German] ?

Martin Koelling: Prepare people by…

Roman Winkelhahn: How can you prepare for, let’s say, an invasion?

Audrey Tang: You’re a journalist, so you get to use the “news” word. I’m not a journalist, so I’m not in a position to say what’s news and what’s not news. This is a line that we draw. A strong distinction, just like I can never be a fact checking agency. That’s the work of journalists and independent civil society. That’s a separate branch, so to speak.

Audrey Tang: In MODA, we’re not in the business of telling news agencies any content layer things. That’s not our business.

Audrey Tang: Our business is to ensure that it’s sufficient funding for not just professional journalism, which we’re also arranging conversations with Google Alphabet, YouTube, and also with Meta/Facebook to ensure that our local journalists have fair supports, financial and digital transformation wise, from the global media companies. That’s our job.

Audrey Tang: Our other job is to promote civic journalism and good cybersecurity hygiene practices, so that each and every of our middle school students and so on can also serve as a contributor to journalism. The point here I’m making is that it’s not about finding the facts. It’s about the fact finding process that makes someone immune, build antibodies to conspiracy theories and propaganda.

Audrey Tang: If high school students practiced this art of journalism, of finding the sources, the narratives, double checking things, investigation, and so on, and see if the three presidential candidates in the January 2020 election have said anything that’s non factual during their platforms and debates, and maybe put their names on the live stream because they found a presidential candidate says something that’s not a fact and so on.

Audrey Tang: Through these activities, the societal resilience is made. People become less vulnerable to the virus of the mind, are less vulnerable to the coughing, except it’s not coughing, it’s share or retweeting that can distribute the propaganda or divisive or polarized rhetorics.

Roman Winkelhahn: Thank you. That’s exactly what I was talking about. If we’re looking at a very concrete case in the past, after Nancy Pelosi visited Taipei, we had the Chinese marine in the Taiwanese sea. They were even above the submarine cables that we’ve been talking about earlier.

Roman Winkelhahn: Looking at this case, what role did the Internet play here in letting citizens communicate, but also providing them with the information they need, because people are afraid, aren’t they?

Audrey Tang: Imagine if there’s no broadband of Internet in Kyiv earlier this year. There will be no way for the international community to watch not just a brutal war of aggression of Russia, but also President Zelensky’s daily addresses. We will not be able to learn about what’s actually going on, as evidenced by the investigative reports of the professional journalists and correspondents.

Audrey Tang: As I mentioned, the way to counter disinformation propaganda and so on is not, in the Taiwanese idea, through takedowns, shut downs, censorships, or things like that, but rather by making sure that the journalists have the sufficient resource in terms of bandwidth and funding, but also that civic journalism is a thing and is vibrant.

Audrey Tang: Of course, that works with the non geostationary orbit satellites, the plural heterogeneous communication systems to make sure that accurate, first hand information, when obtained, can freely be shared among the people, and so enough bandwidth is there to transmit the reports to the international community and so on.

Audrey Tang: Holistically, this is all the same system. It’s about the resilience of democracy as a whole.

Felix Holtermann: As you mentioned Kyiv now, in Ukraine, there’s a big discussion going on about the powers of Elon Musk in cutting off the country from Internet connection, or parts of it, if he wants to by a fingertip. He also did some very highly controversial suggestions, made some highly controversial suggestions for the future prospects of Taiwan.

Felix Holtermann: How do you view Elon Musk? Could he be the right person to be part in the Taiwanese project, or do you have to say perhaps Elon Musk companies are not the right ones for Taiwan?

Audrey Tang: We’re willing to collaborate with any service provider meeting the cybersecurity criteria. The cybersecurity criteria, as I mentioned, is assessed not just by the multinational cloud providers, but also by our local red teams and the blue teams working in tandem. It’s called purple teaming to test out the vulnerabilities in the configurations before the adversaries discover it.

Audrey Tang: This is quite technical answer, but I think the satellite projects between the NDC, Microsoft, Pegatron, and Wave In showed us how to do cybersecurity red teaming, purple teaming, assessments, and so on, in such a plural configuration.

Audrey Tang: As I mentioned, we’re not putting all the eggs into one basket. When there’s a mixture of eggs in a omelet — weird metaphor — [laughs] we can, nevertheless, have sufficient cybersecurity prowess to test the interconnectivity and interoperability of all the different layers. If they meet the criteria, then, of course, we will adopt it, but not all in it.

Martin Koelling: Do you have benchmarks, international benchmarks? Is this a very unique project, and you are pioneering in this area?

Audrey Tang: The geographic — I want to say geological — configuration of Taiwan is quite unique. We insist on these local zones of public clouds. Not because that we insist on, for example, privacy regulations, and so on.

Audrey Tang: We do for some highly regulated industry like health, and finance, and so on. Generally speaking, we’re a free flow of trust country in our legal system. On the other hand, when the submarine cables are cut, it’s not about encryption or privacy. It’s about the computation cannot reach the data centers.

Audrey Tang: For example, in Ukraine, or in other countries that have multiple continental backup systems in the electricity grid, in the computation, in the fiber optics, the topology is not the same. The Taiwanese situation is quite unique.

Martin Koelling: Another question regarding the Chinese maneuvers, military drills. Did you also have some cyber and influence…? Did you also have some cyber and influence drills by the Chinese side at the same time? What are basically your lessons, your experiences from that time?

Audrey Tang: I remember, for example, that the Ministry of National Defense, and the Presidential Office, Administration of Foreign Affairs websites were disrupted by distributed denial of service.

Audrey Tang: 23 times higher than the previous peak, and remained inaccessible for an hour, two hours, and so on, for the general public. In cybersecurity terms, such DDoS doesn’t cause significant harm, because no confidentiality or integrity is broken.

Audrey Tang: It’s not like they can fake an entire website, or if they can get access to confidential documents. During those couple of hours of outage, the disinformation, the conspiracy theory would be that the Black Hat hackers have taken over these ministries, and so on.

Audrey Tang: It’s deliberately trying to confuse a denial of service, like dialing, to keep a line busy with taking over of the ministry. Of course, because the ministry website is not up, people cannot see it. There is room for anxiety, for panic, and so on.

Audrey Tang: On the first hour, the same hour as the drill started, the Ministry of Digital Affairs, my ministry, the MODA website came online, as I mentioned, on both Cloudflare and IPFS.

Audrey Tang: I then talked to our journalists, to the press that, “Please, invite everyone to attack our website, to take us down.” I said that we’ve knocked down even for one second, because we’re part of the web2 and the web3 backbones.

Audrey Tang: By saying this, and sharing technological information in a relatable way, people understood. At least, the journalists understood, but then they translated it. The people understood that keeping a line busy is not the same as taking over a command center. Totally different things.

Audrey Tang: That is the effect we want to have. It’s to make clarification through journalism. Reach more people, more viral than the conspiracy theory, so people become immunized with the conspiracy theory that says, “Oh, you don’t see the website, because the Black Hat hackers have taken over the ministry.” Of course, that’s not true.

Felix Holtermann: If that’s OK for you guys, I would like to ask one or two personal questions. Do we have more questions on the topic itself, Martin, Roman?

Roman Winkelhahn: Before you start with the personal question, I might have one follow up question here. An organizational question, because Jay has also joined here. Is there the possibility to send us the invitation of tenders for the submissions that will start early next year? If you could send us a link…

Audrey Tang: Not yet. The current one, the commercial one, of course.

Roman Winkelhahn: Is it possible to get access to that document?

Audrey Tang: You mean as soon as…

Roman Winkelhahn: If you could send us.

Audrey Tang: …it’s published? You’re subscribing to it, but not before we make it public.

Roman Winkelhahn: Thank you.

Audrey Tang: For the commercial one, the link is already pasted in the chat.

Roman Winkelhahn: Thank you so much.

Felix Holtermann: Great. Thank you so much.

Felix Holtermann: Then, I’ll go. Audrey, we were amazed, or we are amazed by your personal experiences and your personal history. If I’m not mistaken, you lived in Germany for a while. Is that right?

Audrey Tang: In Dudweiler, next to Saarbrücken in Saarland for a year.

Felix Holtermann: Where? In Dudweiler?

Audrey Tang: In Dudweiler.

Felix Holtermann: What did you do there? When have you been there?

Audrey Tang: That was when I was 11, so 1992, ‘93. My father was pursuing his PhD in the Saarbrücken University, studying on the communication and dynamics of the Tiananmen protesters. He was personally at Tiananmen until the 1st of June 1989, fortunately. He returned to Taiwan in the first of June, because three days later…you know. Anyway.

Audrey Tang: In Germany, I’ve met many of his interviewees. Very young people who was in Tiananmen, but cannot stay in Beijing anymore. That’s my childhood memory from Saarbrücken, from Dudweiler. I stayed for a year, because I was then diagnosed, again, with this congenital heart disease that requires surgery. I flew back to Taiwan for surgery.

Felix Holtermann: What did your father do on the Tiananmen Square?

Audrey Tang: He’s a journalist. Both my parents are journalists. He was there covering the movement. He would later also be visiting Berlin during the fall of the wall immediately after. He’s very interested in the theory of democratization and in practice, how people practice democratization. Most of his reports was around that.

Felix Holtermann: What brought you into the field of programming and of technology. You were a very bright kid, if we’re not mistaken?

Audrey Tang: I started programming when I was eight years old and initially, really, just to save some time, because I like mathematics, but I don’t like calculation at all. I don’t like pressing calculators or [laughs] the other computational devices that the Taiwanese kids use. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: Because of that, I don’t miss a day since I started learning programming to translate the more advanced mathematical concepts I was grappling with at a time so that I don’t have to touch a calculator or a abacus.

Martin Koelling: One question. You are now in government office already for quite a while, how has this governmental work changed and your outlook on politics and also privately?

Audrey Tang: I think the main surprise I discovered when I entered the cabinet full time 2016 after working as a reverse mentor for two years, is that there’s so many innovators and potential for a new thought within the career of public service.

Audrey Tang: It was just that they are bound by the anonymity of the public service that people don’t see how many innovation is there within the public service system.

Audrey Tang: My work is mostly through radical transparency, through co creation, through participatory budgeting petitioning and nowadays Presidential Hackathon, to make sure that there is a platform for the most innovative people in the public sector, to build support between them and the innovators.

Audrey Tang: The social innovators in the civic sector to entrepreneurs from the private sector and so on, so they can work on joint projects together. It changed me because I used to think that only the civic and private sectors have the most innovations in the public sector, it’s just for stability.

Audrey Tang: In cases like this mobile 5G fire service truck that talks to the mid Earth orbits, obviously a lot of innovation is also needed in planning that in the public sector.

Roman Winkelhahn: You’re definitely one step ahead of many other countries in the world when looking at the digital innovation that you’ve been starting in 2016 within the Taiwanese government. We would need another hour to [laughs] cover all of the different…

Audrey Tang: It’s just a couple of minutes left, unfortunately.

Roman Winkelhahn: Yeah, unfortunately.

Martin Koelling: Looking at…

Roman Winkelhahn: Sorry, Martin.

Martin Koelling: Looking at your experience and the progress, how big is the progress you made already and what are the challenges going ahead?

Audrey Tang: The main progress, if you call that, that we made over the past few years, is as you know, Taiwan, along with New Zealand, perform very well in counter pandemic, and also the so called infodemic, the pandemic related disinformation crisis, as coined by the WHO.

Audrey Tang: The reason why I would argue is that, as I mentioned, the societal resilience, the democratic resilience is there in Taiwan so that we don’t have any lockdowns for the past three years. There’s not even a single day where you will be fined for traveling across cities or walking out of your home or your block.

Audrey Tang: And we achieve that not through some top down or lock down measures and so on but through people generally understanding through the work of journalists, and civic journalists, the science between each variants of the virus. There’s a general trust from the public sector to the population to fully expand what we’re doing.

Audrey Tang: The explaining is done not just through text but also through data, real time open data, that let people see the vaccine preferences from the people and its effects. The real time supply and demand of the PBEs and rapid testing kits, the pre registration of vaccines, the contact tracing, and so on.

Audrey Tang: I think our main contribution, I would say, is to prove that it’s not a zero sum game between the public health on one side and economy on the other, or human right on the other, but rather, you can take care of both the economy and social wellbeing and public health, and the same for countering the computer virus and virus of the mind, as we say, it’s the disinformation crisis.

Martin Koelling: The challenge?

Audrey Tang: The challenge is, first, if you can’t order submarine cables and we don’t have satellites, then all this playbook doesn’t work. You need to have the underpinning, the sufficient amount of bandwidth, availability, inclusive access, and also, of course, the cybersecurity defense that makes sure that communication above that layer stays trustworthy.

Audrey Tang: It is the foundational layers — the link layer, the hardware layer — that I’m working on now, because the application layer, the societal resilience is already there.

Felix Holtermann: Please excuse another personal question. What I found really amazing was you came out as being a post gender person. I have some friends in China who are gay and who are telling me that the situation in the People’s Republic of China for people that are gay or queer…

Audrey Tang: Conservative or even just a little bit effeminate.

Felix Holtermann: …is really bad, at least from their employers’ perspective. Some also are telling me this about the perspective of their families. I’ve never been to Taiwan. I’ve only been to Beijing. I have to change that. How is the situation in Taiwan? How easy or how hard was it for you to live as the person you are?

Audrey Tang: I’m proud to say that I’ve never been discriminated or somehow subject of discriminatory treatment because I’m post gender. Actually, my gender is really a topic only for international correspondents. For the local people, it’s not even a thing. It really speaks to the maturity, not just tolerance, but also celebration of diversity. That is the Taiwanese society.

Audrey Tang: Not long ago, we were still under martial law during my childhood. The same very non tolerating behavior was there in this society. Homosexuality must not be spoken about. I remember those days when I was a kid. Nowadays, after this whole gender mainstreaming work, more than 40 percent of our parliamentarians are women, our president, of course, Dr. Tsai Ing wen, and so on.

Audrey Tang: It became normal to talk about our work and not care about the gender or sexual orientation or things like that. It’s evident that a celebration of plurality and also democratic resilience so people can collaborate across this diversity contributed to this societal resilience that I was referring to. Gender is just one aspect of it.

Felix Holtermann: This society would be eradicated in some way if China would decide to take over, right?

Audrey Tang: A couple of things. One is that if you plan for collaborative diversity, this planning itself increase the resilience, just like the tectonic plates, the Eurasian Plate, Philippine Sea Plate, literally bump into one another. We build our buildings with resilience in mind.

Audrey Tang: Our experience recovering from the turn of century, September 21 earthquake, united people of different faiths, different ethnic groups, different national languages, and so on. This collaborative experience after a disaster and planning for the next disaster is what unifies people, the spirit of people, despite the huge amount of diversity in ideology, in ethnicity, and things like that.

Audrey Tang: That is something to be cherished. I also like to say the top point of Taiwan, the Yushan Mountain, Jade Mountain, grows by a couple centimeters every year because of those earthquakes. There’s, on average, three felt earthquakes somewhere in Taiwan every day, just like cyber attacks.

Audrey Tang: What I’m trying to say is, this experience also led us to collaborate and reach a different not compromise, but true co creation across diversity.

Felix Holtermann: Wow. That’s a very positive outlook, actually, also in dire times. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: Yes.

Audrey Tang: Now, I have to run to the next meeting. Thank you for a very enjoyable interview…

Martin Koelling: Thank you, sir.

Roman Winkelhahn: Thank you very much.

Felix Holtermann: Thank you very much for taking the time. Very interesting.

Roman Winkelhahn: Bye bye.

Felix Holtermann: Thank you very much for the organization. Goodbye.

Martin Koelling: Thank you. Goodbye.