Surging tensions with China have prompted Taiwan to boost its military defenses. Now it¡¯s heeding the lessons of the war in Ukraine to address one of its bigger weakness: the fragile undersea infrastructure that connects the island to the internet.
Taiwan has 14 subsea cables ¡ª many little wider than a garden hose ¡ª stretching thousands of miles and directly linking it to other Asian nations, the U.S. and other parts of the world. That¡¯s a vulnerability the island¡¯s government, seeing any interruption as potentially destabilizing, wants to minimize. A disruption in a conflict with China could result in Taiwan getting cut off from the world, similar to what happened to the Pacific Island nation of Tonga earlier this year when a volcanic eruption left it without internet access for more than a month.
¡°Undersea cables are a serious Achilles¡¯ heel to Taiwan,¡± said Kenny Huang, chief executive officer at the Taiwan Network Information Center, a nonprofit partially owned by Taiwan¡¯s government.
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