Taiwan's island internet cutoff highlights infrastructure risks

Region has to improve security and resiliency of critical undersea cable networks

Jason Hsu and Charles Mok

May 31, 2023 05:00 JST

A Taiwan Coast Guard ship off the Matsu Islands, where broken subsea cables highlighted the vulnerability of Taiwan's digital infrastructure. © Reuters

Jason Hsu is a senior research fellow at Harvard Kennedy School and a former legislator in Taiwan. Charles Mok is a visiting scholar at Stanford University's Cyber Policy Center and former legislator in Hong Kong.

In early February, the two cables that connect the Matsu Islands at the north end of the Taiwan Strait to Taiwan itself were each broken by Chinese ships in separate incidents over the course of a week.