David Kirichenko
Today Ukraine stands at the forefront of the world’s struggle for democracy and freedom, but tomorrow the front could be Taiwan. Preparations for war with China are currently underway, and Taiwan has been purchasing and stockpiling cutting-edge weaponry from the West to better resist a full-scale invasion. Taipei has also been watching Ukraine carefully and learning from its experience fighting a war against Russia. One oft-overlooked teachable moment has been Ukraine’s ability to mount an effective cyber defense, conducted by a distributed group of backers nicknamed the “IT Army.” Taiwan should look to implement a similar framework and develop its own IT Army for if and when China invades.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine unleashed the first all-out cyber war between two nation-states. Early on, many feared that Ukraine would suffer a “Digital Pearl Harbor” when faced with a full Russian onslaught, but that moment never came. Russian cyber-attacks fizzled out and Ukraine, with help from both public and private partnerships from the West, withstood Russia’s cyber offensive. In parallel, Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation spearheaded the effort to bootstrap an IT Army to ensure maximum resistance. Given the clear benefits of the strategy in Ukraine’s case, the lesson for Taiwan becomes clear: don’t wait until being attacked to bolster IT capacity; rather, take preemptive measures to build the force up during peacetime.
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