Linkages between America and the Taiwanese election narrative

Dec. 19, 2023

Taipei, Taiwan 

Linkages between America and the Taiwanese election narrative

Greetings from Taiwan, where from this vantage point I see America catching on to the narrative about the election coming up in Taiwan and what it foretells about this upcoming year of elections across the democratic world.  The Washington Post newsletter delivered to me today contained three stories about the use of AI in elections.  The top story is about Chinese disinformation created with AI.  “Well-dressed AI-generated news anchors are spewing pro-Chinese propaganda, amplified by bot networks sympathetic to Beijing,” the article reads.  This is not too far off from the truth here in Taipei, where disinformation from China constitutes part of the daily threat of influence operations designed to interfere in the free elections.  Here, it is often packaged with other influence campaigns into an overall paradigm of cognitive warfare.  Deepfakes and bot swarms have all been discovered here and more lurks under the surface.  

Meanwhile, The Atlantic says “Feelings and Vibes Can’t Sustain a Democracy” and “in the 21st century, democracies face the added danger of disinformation efforts from authoritarians at home and hostile powers overseas.”  They then linked to an FBI page about foreign influence operations.  This page notes that foreign influence operations are widely reported to happen through social media platform operations, but others include traditional intelligence tradecraft routes, criminal efforts to suppress voting and illegally finance elections, and cyber attacks against voting infrastructure and elected officials.  This wouldn’t be too far off from a description of China’s influence operations in Taiwan as well.  

It remains problematic to provide answers to how to counter foreign influence operations, even in Taiwan where they are part of daily life.  US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns set US expectations from the Taiwanese elections as “free of intimidation, or coercion, or interference” but the technology is new and so is the corresponding policy requirement.  

Here on the front lines of the war against disinformation, a couple of strategies have been emerging to deal with the vast amount of disinformation from China.  

The first factor is the combating disinformation has to be a whole-of-society endeavor, with specialized NGOs down to conversations among everyday people all involved somehow in the effort.  A significant component of this is making it socially acceptable to debunk disinformation in casual conversation.  This is starting to be the norm in Taiwan.  

The second factor is increasing the media literacy of the population, especially the elderly.  One developing notion of what media literacy looks like is for people to have reasonable suspicion about what they read, especially if it is shocking or contradictory, and allow room for the doubt over whether it is true or not — this would improve society into a more literate crowd when it comes to media.  Taiwan has made great strides in those two factors and it may be up to the US next to do the same in or own way.  It may have to be the case that truly excellent 21st century citizenship must include media literacy and making contributions toward that end. 

When all is said and done, the war against disinformation is only won by the most sophisticated sort of citizenship, which is very simply described as being an educated citizen or civic participant. 

The AI election is here - The Washington Post

Combating Foreign Influence — FBI

US warns China on meddling in Taiwan elections - Taipei Times

Election season starts

Dec. 16, 2023

Taipei, Taiwan

Election season starts

The Taiwanese election campaign has officially started and it will last the 28 days until January 12, the day before the January 13 election. There are officially three candidates for the presidency with Terry Gou dropping out and the cooperation pact between the two remaining opposition parties never materializing and drawing attention from legal investigators for possibly contravening election law. Additionally it was announced that during the last 10 days of the election campaign, it will not be permitted by law to publicly discuss opinion polls.

Election commission officially starts campaign - Taipei Times

The reality beneath the surface is more complicated. Three overlapping issues lurk under the surface of this election. All were reported on today. They are: that this election is a sort of late referendum on the Taiwanese people’s thoughts on the trade with China some 10 years after the Sunflower Movement that shook up society and was a repudiation of then-current trade policies with China; that China’s cognitive warfare directed at the island, including its use of AI to do astroturfing campaigns, which was recently revealed concretely by a US research firm, are intensifying enough to be worthy of notice, by international partners; and, that authorities, having recently detained 40 people on charges of voting interference, with nine charged with aiding a foreign power, the concerns about the security of these free elections are moving the government here to act. I would say the mood here is sort of tense. Taiwanese are no strangers to democracy, but the freedoms here are in careful balance with the measures to address the geopolitical lines of force, some of which, as we have seen, directly target, the island’s self-rule capacity.

Office criticizes Chinese trade ruling - Taipei Times

China’s cognitive warfare intensifying, official says - Taipei Times

Forty detained over voting interference - Taipei Times

It might be good to take a pause here to consider what is important about this election from an international perspective.  The relationship with the US will not be changed from our perspective after all. President Biden has often reiterated the solidity of US support for Taiwan. But the ways that the US understands Asia will take a slightly different quality depending on the party in charge of Taiwan’s government, even if the quantity of US support for Taiwan remains unchanged. Taiwan and the US will always be steadfast partners. But as the US’s critical window onto Asia, Taiwan’s electoral outcome may change the tone of the United States’ Asia policy. Among the topics that may shift in priority are Southeast Asian security and development, North Korea policy, and the Chinese government’s real estate market and credit woes. And above all the topic that will likely increase the most in the US-based geopolitical analysis is the South China Sea island disputes. Depending on the Taiwanese election’s outcome, we might see a discourse about protecting trade, freedom of navigation through the area, and development of resources, especially natural gas, in the region, or, we might see more talk about security disputes and alliances over the disputed islets.

Considering the US and Taiwan relationship separately, that is to say, the biggest change as a result of this election will be in how the US perceives the rest of Asia and Asian policy.  Taiwan is the democratic West’s key window onto Asia, but its interpretive vista may change due to its election outcomes.  The U.S. should be ready to adapt accordingly.  

Escalating evidence of election interference and cognitive warfare in Taiwan

Dec. 14, 2023

Taipei, Taiwan

The narrative surrounding the elections in Taiwan is fragmenting and becoming more complex.  Part of that heeds the predictions of some that technical advances and disinformation from China would make election interference harder to spot. But Taiwan is also putting in a multi-pronged effort to stem the flow of disinformation. Credit also goes to the younger generations of Taiwanese people whose media literacy and civics knowledge is higher than average, due to growing up in a free society, and becoming civically engaged in larger numbers in their youth.

And yet still the challenges facing the island nation keep growing. Although some domestic legislative voices contend that there is no provable election interference by China, the facts lie on the other side of the debate. 

Legislator freezes part of MAC budget - Taipei Times

The escalation of cognitive warfare tactics on the part of China can be perceived on both sides of the Pacific. Internal government memos and security officials’ comments indicate that there is a “multi-front campaign of voting interference” going on, with significant escalations of “gray zone“ tactics, from disinformation to military patrols and flybys from China’s armed forces.  Officials said that four incursions by the PLA Navy occurred last month alone that approached the maritime contiguous zone that is sensitive to Taiwan security.

2024 Elections: Sources say China neared contiguous zone four times as intimidation tactic - Taipei Times

AI has been proven to be used to create disinformation. Both deepfake video and massive social media coordination has been shown to exist only because of AI’s popular availability. 

2024 Elections: Bureaus to be on disinformation alert - Taipei Times

US firm identifies online influence operation - Taipei Times

Taiwan already accounts for over 55% of cyber attack targets in the Asia Pacific region but that figure is only climbing higher until Taiwan can get its cyber security problem under control.  

Taiwan seeks US help for cybersecurity at banks - Taipei Times

Perhaps the ongoing cooperation with the US can be of some help, but the US is also the target of an increasing number of Chinese cyber attacks. That was reported in the Washington Post recently, which noted that critical infrastructure of a civilian and military nature has been breached by Chinese hackers. 

China’s cyber intrusions have hit ports and utilities, officials say - The Washington Post

On the whole, cyber attacks intending to shut down key infrastructure, and cyber attacks aimed at extracting information, are both a problem.

The nature of conflict is that it tends to deepen camaraderie among partisans of the same side. The US and Taiwan, we are in this together against authoritarianism. But the challenges that remain will test our flexibility and our cleverness. 

While beset with political machinations and cognitive warfare, can media literacy help?

Dec. 8, 2023

Taipei, Taiwan

There is a tricky political context enveloping everything going on in Taiwan right now, but I think it reveals something important about the media environment we live in.  It involves both domestic and international affairs, alongside technology and cognitive warfare.  It may be complex, but it is understandable, and I’ll walk through it with the facts.  

First of all, with Taiwan we are talking about a highly open and democratic society.  It was not always like that, and its freedoms were hard-won (a story for another day) but the fact remains that Taiwan is remarkably free and open.  In fact, a recent report by the Civicus Monitor named Taiwan as Asia-Pacific’s only open society.

Taiwan remains Asia’s only ‘open’ country, report says - Taipei Times

That’s reflected in the American people’s perception of Taiwan, with a recent poll showing lots of popular support for Taiwan, in a variety of areas, from Americans.

Most Americans back recognizing Taiwan, poll shows - Taipei Times

A modicum of economic justice is fast on its way too, as, for example, a 2020 ruling from Taiwan’s Supreme Court has opened the door for Taiwanese courts to deal with labor abuses by Taiwanese transnational corporations. 

Holding Taiwan’s transnational corporations to account - Taipei Times

So to begin with, Taiwan is a free and open society comparable to the United States or Europe.  The main difference between Taiwan and the US is that Taiwan has a civil law, or inquisitorial, system whereas the US has a common law system.  This does make some things very different between the two nations.  And the political context of the moment does actually involve this different legal system.

Taiwan is currently governed by the Democratic Progressive Party, which originated as the main opposition during the days of martial law and played a key role in Taiwan’s democratization.  But elections are coming up, and there was a recently aborted attempt by two other parties: the KMT, once responsible for martial law, and the TPP, an upstart party led by charismatic amateur politician Ko Wen-je; to form a coalition ticket to oppose the DPP.  This alliance fell through in spectacular fashion on live TV, causing quite a stir among some segments of the population.  Some might call this a sort of cognitive warfare in and of itself.  But the more immediate fact is that it is now an open question whether it all violated Taiwanese election law or not.  An inquisitorial probe has been initiated here as to whether the participants in this failed election deal broke the law.  Until that probe wraps up, it’s impossible to say, but there is certainly doubt in people’s minds about whether the deal was legal.  Aside from the legality of the matter, it can certainly be said that the kerfuffle hid from casual observation the fact that the most China-friendly candidate in the race, Foxconn founder Terry Gou, dropped out of the race in the midst of the wrangling, handing most of his votes to the KMT-aligned parties, as he was being investigated by China for tax and land use issues, and by Taiwan for buying signatures to get his name on the ballot.  If there was ever going to be a clear-cut instance of China influencing Taiwan’s elections, that was it, but more people were focused on the “blue-white alliance” of the KMT and the TPP at the time. 

KMT-TPP alliance talks under probe - Taipei Times

Now, rather humorously the TPP presidential candidate Ko Wen-je has begun reiterating that he is “deep green at heart,” referring to the DPP’s campaign colors.  Perhaps this is to avoid the appearance of impropriety with the probe ongoing into his “blue-white” alliance attempt.  But it being too soon to really comment on an ongoing investigation, what can be said is that it has become hard to trust, in this political and media environment.  

Ko Wen-je says that he is ‘deep-green at heart’ - Taipei Times

This is because of the overwhelming atmosphere of cognitive warfare.  There’s fake news, unsubstantiated rumors and honest-to-god influence operations from China.  A summit was recently held by local NGO Doublethink Labs on the topic.  The Taiwanese Minister of Foreign Affairs in speaking said that their government has established a cross-agency mechanism to combat disinformation. 

Foreign minister seeks unity against authoritarianism - Taipei Times

Of course some disinformation, such as that surrounding the blue-white alliance, is not so easily confronted, but at the very least China’s use of cognitive warfare and influence operations can be combated.  One example is an online rumor posted on the platform “Baoliao Commune” (“explosive article commune”) claiming that politicians in Taiwan were using wiretaps to get information on each other and the public.  But the article used simplified Chinese characters that are only used in China, the Gregorian calendar, and the titles of persons referenced and the phone numbers cited were fake.  

Online wiretapping rumors untrue, prosecutors say - Taipei Times

It is good to see public and private sources using their authority to fact-check disinformation.  But not all cognitive warfare, influence operations, or propaganda is so easy to spot or prove false.  How should we educate people on how to survive in a new environment where cognitive warfare is the norm?

I don’t have all the answers, but I believe this is a good start.  An interview with a RAND Corporation education researcher in an article for the Guardian reprinted yesterday by the Taipei Times brought this point to bear: “a lot of the skills [in spotting cognitive warfare] involve recognizing emotional manipulation, factual absence, and author intent.”  With this perhaps we can make a feasible start on media literacy education.

Teaching children how to spot fake news - Taipei Times

Media literacy as an educational subject matter is far from having a settled theory behind it.  Most of all, the skills provided by it can be conveyed as a sort of intervening force but people still respond best to media literacy education that speaks to where and how they get their media.  And even the simplest navigation of online media requires a dizzying array of skill sets when you break it down into its component parts.  The RAND Corporation researcher above did just that in a coauthored paper on the subject, noting that “navigating this environment to complete even simple tasks requires many skills, such as the ability to evaluate sources, synthesize multiple accounts into coherent understanding of an issue, understand the context of communications, and responsibly create and share information.”  And that’s only the rationality required.  It’s to say nothing of the reasoning necessary to navigate these narratives, and when you throw cognitive warfare into the mix it becomes more complex still.  Dealing with this much information is already taxing, but not only that, now there’s disinformation too. 

Exploring Media Literacy

The example above of the online post on Baoliao Commune with fake information in simplified Chinese only in use in Mainland China, is a prime example of cognitive warfare coinciding with disinformation.  This is the kind of thing we can expect to see more of, in all languages.  Observe how it plays on narratives already present in the decision space.  Most politically aware people around the civilized world right now are, not without reason, wary or downright fearful of surveillance.  This is because facts have revealed extensive spying operations by the Western nations on other countries and their own citizens.  Major non-Western powers are also notorious for surveillance.  Every nation does it if they can afford it.  Part of the game of geopolitics these days is to do extensive surveillance of your neighbors and peers in the international community.  We know this from the Edward Snowden revelations and so forth.  Although this particular bit of news was fake, mass surveillance is not, and so there’s a very real fear to play on by creating this disinformation.  One cannot blame people from having a justified fear of surveillance by the government, and that’s what makes disinformation about it so troubling and effective.  There is a narrative of mass surveillance out there, and it demands our attention, and that’s what allows this disinformation trick to be played on some.  

So what should be done about cognitive warfare like this?  You may notice that the paradigm of “information paralysis” exists in this space.  Cognitive warfare exists militarily to paralyze decision makers before and during conflicts, so this is actually the aim and goal of cognitive warfare: by exploiting narratives, to paralyze the decision making capability of the target.  In other words, to control the information that controls the opponent’s decision.  “Those that win the fight for information will win it all,” a US general has said.  

Cognitive warfare will be deciding factor in battle

What should be done when facing cognitive warfare is to carefully lay out the real facts and set up the narratives involved before firmly dividing what is true from what is false.  So, mass surveillance exists, but this wiretap news in particular was false.  Doing something like that helps more than getting mad about fake news.  

Observation will again show that this fake news about wiretaps triggered all the analytical warning bells outlined by the RAND Corporation researcher quoted in the Guardian.  There was emotional manipulation of people’s fear, factual absence regarding the actual reference points of mass surveillance like the US warrantless wiretap program revealed by Snowden, and there was clear author’s intent to cause left-leaning people to fear the party that most represents them.  Disinformation is rarely sophisticated and I think this outline of analytical categories to identify it is quite useful. Disinformation will be less of a problem by as much as people understand these categories of analysis.  

Although Taiwan’s legal system is very different, they can at least contribute in this way to our understanding of ourselves.  

Cognitive warfare’s developing narratives in Taiwan

Dec. 5, 2023

Taipei, Taiwan

One of the major topics of China’s cognitive warfare here in Taiwan has been inciting the worry that the Americans will not come if Taiwan is threatened.  China knows this will cause the most worry to the Taiwanese amongst all topics of a military nature, and so it is often repeated as a propaganda item by the PRC’s influence operations.  You can see the effect of this propaganda as it was cited by the Taiwan FactCheck Center’s Disinfo Detector in that publication’s latest release.

Inciting anxiety about the looming war- the disinfo narratives about the possible Taiwan Strait crisis during the 2024 Taiwanese presidential election

However the fact is that the U.S. government is required by law to come to Taiwan’s aid in a crisis across the Strait, and there is strong bipartisan desire among U.S. lawmakers and administration personnel to do so.  This is the baseline agreement between the U.S. and Taiwan.  But on top of that basic understanding there is also ongoing cooperation between the two countries on a host of issues in public and private interests both.  The latest area of potential shared concern is what is variably called information warfare, influence operations, or cognitive warfare.  In a recent speech in Taiwan, the director of the American Institute in Taiwan, the de facto American embassy in Taiwan, highlighted this domain, even stating that AIT itself had been targeted by a state actor spreading disinformation about it online.  Furthermore, in her speech the Director reiterated that Taiwan and the U.S. together are on the front lines of the disinformation and propaganda war.  The Global Declaration on Information Integrity Online, which Taiwan and the U.S. participated in the drafting of, is a beginning to counter this trend and restore trust in trustworthy sources of news and information.  

Remarks by AIT Director Sandra Oudkirk at National Taiwan University - American Institute in Taiwan

But we should also keep an eye out for what is happening in the gray zone of information technology among computer users wearing both white and black hats, so to speak.  What are the latest real threat trends, and how is technology being used for both beneficent and nefarious geopolitical ends?  At the moment, 2024’s elections across the democratic world are the focus of immense contention amongst many partisans.  The way technology is being used to undermine democracies, for example, by China-sponsored cyber actors, reflects the latest vulnerabilities in the infrastructure.  A very recent pattern is Chinese state-backed hacking groups breaking into private routers and launching cyber attacks from there, which hides the origin of the attacks — although we also know that Hong Kong, post-National Security Law, is a favored launching point for these attacks.  The other thing these hacker groups are doing is staying hidden in the networks doing espionage for nation-states.  Increasingly, democratic nations with open societies will have to band together to limit and contain these threats which amount to cognitive warfare operations against the freedom of communication, and establish both technical and social norms which reduce the damage from these authoritarian attacks. 

“Massive increase” in Chinese cyberattacks against Taiwan: Google - News - RTI Radio Taiwan International

Is China waging a cyber war with Taiwan? | CSO Online

Narratives and cognitive warfare

Dec. 3, 2024

Taipei, Taiwan 

There were two brief notes in the Taiwan news today about the geopolitical maneuvering surrounding the 2024 Taiwanese elections.  And, as shown yesterday by Meta’s closing of several hundred fake social media accounts spreading disinformation about the 2024 U.S. election, what happens in Taiwan will contribute to the development of election narratives across the democratic world next year. 

The first note to highlight is that Taiwanese prosecutors have announced that they found evidence that China’s Taiwan Affairs Office offered paid trips to China to influence Taiwanese votes to vote for specific candidates. 

Stiffer penalties under National Security Act take effect - Taipei Times

The second note is about the more local controversy about a particularly sensitive labor agreement with India.  

Civic group, legislator tout labor synergy with India - Taipei Times

Rampant misinformation surfaced after the announcement of the prospective deal that this potential influx of Indian laborers would lead to more instances of sexual assault in Taiwan.  Through this misinformation drive, which exploited racial animus and even planned a mass protest, we can see how the use of cultural narratives can be a strong social force in society.  Often the only way to counter these narratives is through alternative narratives.  A local legislator here has labeled this misinformation drive about the Indian labor agreement as an instance of “cognitive warfare,” and I believe this incident is the most likely to set a pattern for the disinformation efforts that will be seen across the democratic world’s elections this upcoming year (Taiwan, Indonesia, India, and the U.S.).  The only way to oppose this kind of cognitive warfare is to master the use of narrative.