Print This Post With ImagesWithout Images Taiwan is paying attention to seabed risks. It’s suffered undersea cable breaks and it has noted deliberate attacks on such communications lines under the Baltic Sea. Its response is to build a robust and redundant national system for switching wholly to satellite communications if it must. All that stands between Taiwan and a near-total internet blackout are 15 undersea cables. In early January, one off Taiwan’s north coast suffered mysterious damage. Taiwan suspected a Chinese-owned ship was responsible. Luckily, the data connections the cable was carrying were immediately rerouted and restored. The island was not so lucky two years earlier when subsea cables near the outlying Matsu archipelago were cut by two Chinese vessels, perhaps accidentally. Around 14,000 Matsu residents spent more than 50 days with cripplingly slow internet before Taiwan was able to repair the connections. Elon Musk’s SpaceX, having helped Ukraine, at first seemed like an obvious possible partner for Taiwan. Taiwanese officials even held exploratory talks with the company in 2019. But in early 2022, these talks broke down. SpaceX wanted full ownership of its Taiwanese venture, as it does for such operations in other countries. The government wanted a domestic entity to have at least 50 percent ownership to prevent China from pressuring SpaceX or Musk to withdraw services from Taiwan during a conflict. Musk also made comments that Taiwan perceived to be pro-Beijing, which soured officials’ feelings. In 2023, he described the rambunctious democracy as an ‘integral part of China’ and suggested the US military was preventing the two sides unifying. As a result, Taiwanese officials are now even leery of relying on Starshield, a business unit of SpaceX in development designed to provide satellite constellations to the US military. After the dropping the SpaceX project, Taiwan’s digital affairs ministry in 2023 hatched a plan to produce other low earth orbit and medium earth orbit satellite constellations. The program calls for Taiwan to build roughly 700 satellite receivers across the island that will function as hotspots. The plan calls for participation of several satellite providers, both commercial and governmental, to avoid having a single point of failure. ‘The more layers you have, the more resilience you have,’ said Sheu Jyh-shyang, an expert from Taiwan’s Institute for National Defense and Security Research. As part of this plan, Taiwan’s Chunghwa Telecom, which is one-third owned by the Taiwanese government, signed a deal with London-based Eutelsat OneWeb in 2023 for services from satellites in low Earth orbit. The service began in October. However, the signals were accessed through ground stations in Japan, Thailand and Guam, as Taiwan’s 700 planned receiving stations had not been completed. Chunghwa also signed a deal last August with Luxembourg-based SES to add its medium-orbit satellite services to Taiwan’s space-based communications. But then, in December, Taiwan’s science and technology minister, Wu Cheng-wen, told foreign reporters that OneWeb’s capacity was too small for the country’s needs. This was hardly surprising: OneWeb’s satellites number in the hundreds, whereas Starlink has more than 6000. Wu said Taiwan had begun talks with Amazon subsidiary Project Kuiper. This is one of the few ventures that can potentially rival Starlink. Project Kuiper is intended eventually to have more than 3000 satellites in low earth orbit. However, satellite constellations’ capacity will still be far behind the service offered by Taiwan’s undersea cables, says Sheu. So they will serve as an emergency backup, Sheu says. The project aims to keep government and society working even if all subsea cables are unusable, he says. The back-up satellite systems would provide internet access for only critical services: government agencies, the military, hospitals and financial institutions. Taiwan would use social media to send messages to the international community about its plight, Sheu says, but the internet would not be used for public entertainment. Taiwan has pledged almost US$10 billion towards space industry development over the next several years. This includes plans to launch the first of two government-developed indigenous communications satellites by 2026. Taiwan must also develop its own launch rockets. Otherwise, its defence will always be at the mercy of foreign countries, as they will have the final say on Taiwanese satellite launches. Wu said that the government wanted to pick a site in southeast Taiwan for a launch pad and that launches were expected within five years. In the meantime, the government has come up with interim measures. In October, it unveiled an indigenously developed balloon that acts as a high-altitude communications platform. It can give ground network coverage within 11km and stay airborne for two weeks. Wu describes this as an ‘intermediate solution’ to help quickly restore communications if infrastructure is destroyed in case of natural disasters or ‘other events’. In January, the defence ministry said it would step up surveillance of areas where subsea cables were located. The navy plans to detect and monitor vessels that are loitering or otherwise engaging in suspicious activities. Author