Ta-Chen Chen, Non-Resident Fellow of the National Security Program at the Research Institute for Democracy, Society, and Emerging Technology (DSET), was recently interviewed by Nikkei Asia regarding the recent incidents of subsea cable damage around Taiwan and the potential risks of gray-zone activities. The report also cited the views of several international experts, noting that Taiwan’s subsea cable infrastructure is not only the lifeline of communications but also vital to financial transactions, industrial supply chains, and military communications security, making it a strategic chokepoint.
In addition to DSET’s perspective, other interviewees pointed to intensifying regional geopolitical tensions, insufficient global repair capacity, and the limited effectiveness of existing international law in protecting subsea cables, underscoring the multiple challenges Taiwan faces in this domain.
In the interview, Chen emphasized that Taiwan must strengthen both its repair capacity and redundant infrastructure. He noted that Taiwan currently has no dedicated cable repair vessels of its own and relies entirely on international assistance, which often results in repair times stretching over several weeks or even months — severely undermining communications resilience. He suggested that policy direction should focus on three key areas: first, investing in and developing autonomous subsea cable repair capacity; second, promoting the construction of redundant cables to reduce the risks of single points of failure; and third, upgrading marine monitoring and detection technologies to identify abnormal activities at an early stage.
DSET’s latest policy report, Undercurrent: Limits and Prospects of Submarine Cable Security for Taiwan, likewise stresses that the evidentiary threshold for attributing gray-zone activities is extremely high, and that the absence of concrete intelligence weakens the legitimacy of policy responses. The report recommends that Taiwan and its allies pursue three policy pathways: punishment, by implementing countermeasures under international legal frameworks when sufficient evidence exists; offset, by using unilateral or multilateral coordination mechanisms to increase the regulatory costs on violators when evidence is limited; and address, by leveraging international agreements to strengthen accountability for flags of convenience. These strategies, the report argues, will not only enhance Taiwan’s digital resilience but also help safeguard the legitimacy and credibility of democratic systems in the international arena.
