Defending Taiwan’s Critical Communications Infrastructure from Cyberattack

A War Game Scenario

If China were to attack Taiwan, the island nation’s critical communications infrastructure would be at risk of a devastating cyberattack. To explore potential strategies for defending this infrastructure, Dr. Nina A. Kollars and Jason Vogt, both associate professors at the US Naval War College’s Cyber and Innovation Policy Institute (CIPI), designed a war game last year.

Participating Experts and Results

The war game enlisted government and private sector cybersecurity experts from Black Hat and DEF CON to participate, and the results were presented at ShmooCon earlier this month. The scenario was as follows:

August 6, 2030: A Critical Moment

Relations between the PRC and Taiwan had deteriorated to the point where a cyberattack on Taiwan’s critical communications infrastructure was a real possibility. Some suggested decentralizing the infrastructure, spreading it out in smaller chunks across the country using solar power and cheap radio systems. Others argued for the opposite: concentrating communications and power systems in fewer, denser areas that China might be reticent to destroy.

Military Perspective

Dr. Kollars admits that some of the ideas presented during the war game were "pretty risky." One of them was to colocate all of Taiwan’s precious assets, such as the TSMC semiconductor plant, all of its antiquities from China, large populations, and a nuclear power plant, assuming an adversary wouldn’t strike a target that had everything stacked on top of it. This is a "heck of a gamble," according to Kollars.

Practical and Cheap Solutions

Ultimately, the most popular ideas were those that were cheap and practical, such as using Bluetooth or Raspberry Pi mesh networks as backups to cellular connectivity. "The thing that surprised us most about this exercise," Vogt recalls, "was how much time they spent talking about the civilian population, and what needed to be done to prepare them: everything from public messaging campaigns on how to be cyber secure to full-on training programs to create civilian cyber cores that could not just protect themselves but also operate and maintain equipment when there’s no government around, and keep the communications going for longer periods of time."

Conclusion

The war game scenario highlights the importance of preparing Taiwan’s critical communications infrastructure for a potential cyberattack. By exploring different strategies and involving experts from various fields, the island nation can develop effective defenses against such an attack.