Digital Sovereignty in Taiwan: Controlling the Internet in the Tsai and Lai Era

The Centre of Taiwan Studies is delighted to welcome Sam Robbins to give a talk as part of this year’s Centre of Taiwan Studies Summer School on how questions of internet access, control, and security have reshaped relations between activists, policymakers, and the state in the Tsai and Lai eras.

Since the beginning of the 2020s, questions of access and control over the internet have become more salient in Taiwan. Large scale data breaches and attacks on undersea cables have encouraged activists and policy makers alike to push new ways to secure Taiwan’s internet access. This has resulted in a range of new 'onshoring policies' including satellite construction and recent investment in 'Sovereign AI’.

This shift toward questions of control have led to new tension points between activists and policy makers. Taiwan’s proposed Electronic ID policy and social media regulation bills in 2021 and 2022 respectively both met with significant pushback from Taiwan’s digital civil society, leading both efforts to eventually fail. In the world of cyber security, however, activists often worry the government isn’t doing enough, leading to the emergence of grassroots groups trying to promote security awareness and best practices.

This talk examines this new emergent political reality and considers what it tells us about how geopolitics and domestic politics are colliding in Taiwan. It points to the new lines of conflict emerging, and considers the unevenness of sovereignty in an age when digital space always transverses physical borders.

Image credit: Danielle-Claude Bélanger via Unsplash