Masters’ in International Policy students publish capstone reports on Taiwan’s cybersecurity and online resiliency
Masters’ in International Policy students publish capstone reports on Taiwan’s cybersecurity and online resiliency
Through the Policy Change Studio, students partner with international organizations to propose policy-driven solutions to new digital challenges.
New reports highlight the work of two Masters' in International Policy capstone projects.
Countering China’s Use of Private Firms in Covert Information Operations
Authors: Gaute Friis, Nickson Quak, Sara Shah, and Elliot Stewart
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) spends billions annually on foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI) activities. President Xi Jinping has framed this effort as “telling China’s story well,” but the strategies the PRC employs to shape global narratives extend far beyond the overt promotion of a pro-China worldview. Today, the PRC utilizes a sophisticated array of tactics and tools to shape global narratives, ranging from outright disinformation to censorship and intimidation. These tools and tactics are being deployed as part of the PRC’s increasingly aggressive approach, one that draws inspiration from Russian FIMI tactics. Rather than solely promoting its own image, China's FIMI operations increasingly aim to sow discord and exacerbate divisions among foreign audiences.
This more aggressive approach requires new capabilities and, importantly, the ability to operate covertly. Through networks of inauthentic social media accounts that have no obvious state affiliation, the PRC is working to manipulate the information ecosystem, amplifying information it finds beneficial while drowning out critical voices. The PRC invests heavily in this coordinated inauthentic behavior (CIB), now operating the “largest known cross-platform covert influence operation to date,” according to open-source reporting, with Chinese information operations (IO) unveiled on over 50 platforms and in over 40 languages.
It's worth noting that the PRC's covert FIMI efforts targeting foreign audiences, while historically ineffective, are showing signs of improvement. For years, these efforts were marked by quantity over quality, resulting in little discernible impact and sometimes even backfiring. However, there is a growing body of evidence suggesting that the PRC is honing its tactics, successfully staging protests in DC against bans on imports from Xinjiang and sowing distrust around the cause of wildfires in Maui. This raises the question of how? What has changed? Effective covert FIMI necessitates not only manpower, but also adept technical and cultural knowhow. Where did the PRC acquire these capabilities?
Through a review and synthesis of the latest research on PRC FIMI, as well as more than 50 interviews with leading experts around the world, our team has developed what we believe is the most detailed publicly available map of the PRC covert FIMI ecosystem to date – including the first systematic review of the commercial companies that increasingly support Beijing’s clandestine influence operations, referred to as privatized FIMI (P-FIMI) actors.
The PRC is increasingly engaging commercial firms to execute its FIMI campaigns. By tapping into a pool of private talent and innovation that has developed in the digital marketing and social media influence industries, the PRC is bolstering its ability to disseminate its narratives and manipulate public discourse on a global scale. Russia has engaged commercial firms as part of its FIMI efforts for years, and while the United States and other governments have sanctioned some of these Russian entities, similar Chinese firms are currently operating with impunity.
To better understand the impact of this private influence ecosystem, our team traveled to Taiwan, a country on the frontline of PRC FIMI. In collaboration with our partner, Doublethink Lab (DTL), a leading Taiwanese civil society organization working to counter PRC disinformation, we were able to speak with local experts, academics, civil society organizations, and government actors who comprise Taiwan’s counter-FIMI ecosystem, widely understood to have one of the most well-developed and sophisticated defenses to PRC FIMI.
Our field research revealed critical deficiencies in how social media companies address covert influence operations in Taiwan. Moreover, we uncovered significant vulnerabilities in Taiwan's defenses, particularly its difficulties countering the private FIMI actors that now play a crucial role in the PRC's strategy to undermine Taiwan's democracy and advance its long-term goal of annexation.
Key Findings:
- Many more Chinese state actors are involved in the production and dissemination of FIMI than understood and attributed in previous studies.
- 16 commercial firms operating FIMI campaigns have thus far been publicly linked to the Chinese state apparatus - which we believe represents only a fraction of the total actors involved. These firms support either the production, infrastructure, or dissemination of Chinese FIMI.
- P-FIMI actors are shifting from the use of bot farms and fake accounts to influencers in order to sponsor FIMI that is more credible and tailored to target audiences.
- By undermining democratic institutions, PRC FIMI exacerbates polarization in Taiwan.
- While Taiwan’s counter-FIMI ecosystem is led by a dedicated and innovative civil society, limited formal coordination between organizations and a general tendency to over-index on fact-checking rather than P-FIMI attribution results in a capabilities mismatch.
- Taiwan’s efforts to counter PRC FIMI through political and legal mechanisms are undermined by the presence of a domestic information manipulation and influence ecosystem (Wang Jun) that is propped up by Taiwan’s political parties across the board.
Recommendations:
- Without a multisector community providing strong P-FIMI attribution, stakeholders in positions of power (including social media platforms and governments) cannot properly action or enforce against this type of covert FIMI activity.
- Newly allocated funding to support Taiwanese civil society should be preferentially given to organizations and individuals engaged in investigation, attribution, and independent journalism rather than fact-checking.
- The Taiwanese government must pursue policies that curb the information manipulation system, even if these policies impact the ecosystem of domestic information manipulation and influence actors (Wang Jun) that many political actors make use of.
- The United States and other governments should increase intelligence sharing through federal/fair trade commissions – framing P-FIMI as a deceptive business practice – and sanction any commercial entities caught supporting or running covert FIMI campaigns.
- Social media platforms should consider modifying ad policies to mandate disclosure of all paid content, increase investment in investigations, publish takedown reports with higher frequency, and continue to consider tradeoffs around device-level banning and content provenance.
You can read our full assessment of the PRC P-FIMI ecosystem, Taiwan’s response to it, and a detailed set of recommendations for Taiwan and other countries to improve their defenses here.
Securing Taiwan’s Undersea Cables
Authors: Hamzah Daud, Dwight Knightly, and Francesca Verville in partnership with Yachi Chiang, Professor, National Taiwan Ocean University, and President, Taiwan Law and Technology Association
As the People’s Republic of China (PRC) continues its intrusive campaign against Taiwan, the island’s digital infrastructure remains a ready target. In 2023, Chinese commercial vessels severed the undersea fiber-optic cables connecting Taiwan’s outlying Matsu Islands to the mainland, leaving roughly 13,000 Taiwanese citizens without internet for months. The Matsu disaster was the latest in a series of suspicious cable-cutting incidents that have raised concerns in Taipei about the resiliency of Taiwan’s undersea infrastructure.
Taiwan’s ability to communicate internationally depends entirely on the integrity of just fifteen undersea cables. If Taiwan cannot deter “gray zone” aggression and build redundant communications systems capable of weathering contingencies, further escalation could be catastrophic.
As students in the Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy (MIP) program, the Matsu outage was the catalyst for our project, which sought to explore practical policy options for Taiwanese decision-makers to enhance the resiliency of Taiwan’s cable infrastructure. Our report is informed by months of research and interviews with over 50 stakeholders representing governments, the private sector, academia, and think tanks from Taiwan, the United States, and the Indo-Pacific region.
The report proposes innovative policy solutions for enhancing Taiwan’s digital resiliency that are underexplored in the existing literature. By enhancing resiliency, Taiwan raises the political and technical costs of damaging its digital infrastructure while narrowing the spectrum of harmful action in which the PRC may maintain plausible deniability.
We are grateful for the extensive guidance and support that we received from our local partner, Yachi Chiang, a professor at the National Taiwan Ocean University and president of the Taiwan Law and Technology Association.
Recommendations:
- The Taiwanese government should work with the Taiwan Network Information Center (TWNIC) to urge companies that operate popular websites to dual register under the .tw domain. Doing so will reduce reliance on off-island domain name system (DNS) servers that require undersea cables.
- Taiwan should leverage existing legal authorities to conduct an audit of its undersea cable infrastructure to identify potential physical and cyber security vulnerabilities.
- Taiwan should designate its domestic undersea cables as critical infrastructure to enable proactive oversight and inform contingency planning.
- Taiwan should consider exempting Starlink from its joint venture requirements. Doing so would accelerate the development of a heterogeneous communications system while fostering a competitive market with other commercial providers.
