Taiwan’s elections are important to democracies around the world, including the U.S.

Nov. 24, 2023

Taiwan’s upcoming election is important to the U.S. because it is a testing ground for strategies to counter disinformation.  Recent development of AI has supercharged this attack vector against global democracies.  The authors below call this sort of threat to democracy “computational propaganda” and the work is worth a read.

Computational Propaganda and Democracy in Taiwan: AI’s Impacts on Pre-Existing Challenges – Taiwan Insight

The note made by the authors that development of AI could potentially alter the landscape of political discourse drew my attention.  It’s important to see in Taiwan’s effort to maintain its democratic society, a universal lesson for democracy around the world: disinformation and election interference needs to be opposed by the whole of society working together. 

Taiwan’s experience of holding elections under these conditions is a bellwether for democratic societies that are also to have major elections in 2024, like Indonesia, India, and the U.S.  This is something the author of this second piece explicitly mentions. 

How AI could sway voters in 2024’s big elections | Chatham House – International Affairs Think Tank