Taiwanese Ambassador Ya-Ping (Abby) Lee, the head of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Tel Aviv, believes Israel can use Taiwan’s playbook for defending against Chinese disinformation campaigns to defend itself from similar campaigns by Iran and other countries.
In an exclusive interview with The Jerusalem Post, she said, “Some people argue this is only a rivalry between China and Taiwan, and that it will not happen in Israel. But you see the alliance of Iran, China, and Russia. They are learning from each other. They are learning from the same playbook of disinformation campaigns.”
Lee functions as an ambassador, even though, due to Israel-China relations sensitivities, Taiwan’s extensive office visited by the Post is not officially called an embassy.
She said that besides military, diplomatic, and economic threats from China, the “manipulative interference directed against Taiwan has incorporated similar techniques as those used for Crimea” when Russia annexed it in 2014.
“We will always call upon like-minded countries, including Israel. We need to build digital solidarity. We need to help each other to share best practices, data, and experience to know what are the threat indicators; to do joint investigations and joint research among civil organizations,” said the diplomat.
In 2023, Taiwan experienced around five million cyberattacks daily, mainly from China, which adds up to just over half a billion attacks for the year for the Asia-Pacific region, said Lee.
“Whenever there is a critically important election, we see the Chinese government increase disinformation campaigns against Taiwan, to try to divide and polarize the society, and to discredit the ruling government, to make us more divided, and to try to interfere with the electoral outcome in favor of China,” she continued.
In terms of statistics, Lee stated that a Taiwanese NGO has said that TikTok users in Taiwan are more inclined than others to believe in Chinese videos.
“Over half of TikTok users, 51.8%, will translate these beliefs into electoral behavior – meaning, going to vote for the party or candidate more supported by the Chinese government,” she stated.
The strategy is to “inject fear of war and mistrust of the US.”
The disinformation campaigns also push the message “that democracy doesn’t deliver. This is a key message that the Chinese government wants to sell or push forward,” according to Lee.
Direct impact on Israel post-October 7
Further, Lee connected disinformation issues directly to Israel, saying, “After October 7, there were a lot of altered videos from the battlefield of the Gaza Strip which have been used out of context and circulated on TikTok platforms.
“Israel might be second to Taiwan [in being targeted with disinformation] after October 7. I read a report last week from the director-general of the BIS [counterintelligence] of the Czech Republic, in his direct general testimony to their parliament, where he pointed out an investigation of Chinese manipulation of TikTok at a ratio of 10 to 1 to support Hamas against Israel,” she said.
Taiwan-Israel relations after ICC arrest warrants
Asked whether the International Criminal Court issuing arrest warrants against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant had altered Taiwanese support for Israel, she responded, “Taiwan was among the first to express solidarity after October 7. That support remains staunch and unchanged despite all the challenges Israel has been facing.”
Or put more simply, she confirmed that Taiwan is not one of the countries turning on Israel after the events with the ICC.
Russian vs Chinese disinformation
The Post raised European studies that have said that Russian disinformation campaigns focused on manipulating specific incidents, whereas Chinese campaigns focused on manipulating longer-term themes.
Confirming this, she explained, “China’s strategic ambitions are much larger: to provide an alternative worldview to replace democracy. So there is a need for the salami-cutting strategy and the block-building strategy. The history of the Chinese Communist Party is to divide similar groups.”
She said that the CCP likes to unite small groups together to take on a larger group, and then to divide the larger group itself into smaller groups once they overtake it.
However, she said Taiwan could help Israel and others. “We can share Taiwan’s countermeasures.”
One legal tool is a law that addresses regulatory and cybersecurity management issues. “It more broadly characterizes hardware and software which can be controlled by foreign entities and have a direct impact on society, and which can be characterized as harmful products. They cannot be installed or used in the public domain,” she said.
Not that this law is a fix-all for hardware issues that China might use for hacking systems and also eventual disinformation campaigns.
The Post noted that the US has said it will take many years to replace Chinese hardware and technological chips embedded in technological platforms across America, and Lee agreed that, like in the US, it will probably take Taiwan years to replace such Chinese chips.
But she added that without the regulations, “it will continue forever, and people won’t use caution. The first step is to raise awareness of a harmful product.”
A specific piece of the disinformation issue has been accusations that China uses TikTok as a backdoor into a mix of spying, hacking, and concerted disinformation campaigns in the US and elsewhere.
Questioned about what Taiwan would do if the US bans TikTok, Lee was circumspect.
“This is a very blurry line in democracy. It is impossible in a democracy like Taiwan or Israel to ban any personal usage. You have the freedom to use TikTok,” she said, adding that if America does actually ban the social media platform, “Taiwan would have long discussions” about the issue.
In April, the US passed a law giving TikTok until January to be sold to a non-Chinese owner or be banned.
Upping combating disinformation
Lee said that Taiwan upped its game in 2018 after facing two years of viral disinformation.
Now, she said, platforms must, within two hours, come up with two images or 200 characters to clarify false news or misinformation.
“You must respond in an honest way and in a here and now manner.” Otherwise, the public will lose its faith in institutions, she warned.
“In January, during the recent election [in Taiwan], the disinformation campaign became more massive,” but combating this is “very critical to uphold our democratic way of life.”
Because of the increased threat, “the government shortened the responding time for deepfake disinformation to only 60 minutes,” stated the diplomat.
“There is robust grassroots co-fact-checking by NGOs and collective efforts to do fact-checking online. Taiwan has a model for the public to punish and address the threat of disinformation. Without the involvement of the grassroots, it would be impossible for the government to address all of the challenges single-handedly,” she added.
Combating the AI disinformation threat
Next, she addressed the fact that China and other countries today can unleash massive amounts of artificial intelligence (AI) bots which can multiply disinformation at rates that even put the large disinformation campaigns of the last decade to shame.
AI can also create deepfake disinformation beyond the millions of less sophisticated messages being disseminated.
She said China’s AI systems could “generate 10,000 messages, so the mainstream opinion on a website could be generated by a robot. You can’t differentiate that, because the bot account can interact naturally. It has a diary for how to act like a real person. It can interact” because it has been taught both language and cultural attitudes.
If, “in the past, they could just [were limited to] do [less sophisticated] copy and paste for messages, with generative AI” it is easier to do deepfake approaches using bot accounts.
In addition, “Taiwan has been doing a better job enhancing media literacy and media competence. You need to be aware of the false news and must also contribute to the truth. Only through education can you get the antibody to disinformation.
“We need to encourage young people to think like a journalist, to take a balanced view. We have media literacy in junior high school for sixth to eighth graders,” she noted.
“In the post-truth era, we must stick to the truth and pluralism.”
Moreover, she said, “Disinformation campaigns impose on humankind the amplifying of hate languages. They push people to believe in extreme views.... We need people to come to the middle.”
She acknowledged that this process “can be time consuming,” and that in the meantime the extended debate “can paralyze the democratic process.”
An additional complication in the modern age is the capability of a country to coordinate a news campaign, with its state media and social media platforms aligned.
“It is very easy to see the coordinated action and propaganda of the state Chinese media, as you go to TikTok and they use the same footage. Now the state media has become more sophisticated. They use simplified Chinese characters.
TikTok then changes these to traditional forms of Chinese characters to try to disguise the propaganda” machine of China linking them all together, said Lee.
But she said that “if you compare the time and the scheduling, the state media is coordinating with TikTok.”
To preemptively debunk these campaigns, Taiwan tries to “give the antibody first: Educating the public challenges an AI which is trying to bring forth social media narratives.”
There is another anti-fraud law under debate in Taiwan’s parliament which has not yet passed, but would give “the government the power to require Google, Facebook, and others, that if they want to carry an ad, they will have to use the digital signature to make sure the advertiser is a real person and not a bot account.
“This takes time, but it is a priority for the cabinet to push forward and is a bipartisan issue,” she said, though warning that “parliament is still one institution, [often] with a different agenda” than the government.
Taiwan also looks at the disinformation battle as a marathon, with Lee noting, “If you look at the election results for January, the disinformation has not been efficient. The DPP [Democratic Progressive Party] still won the presidency. So disinformation was not successful this time. But it can always have a cumulative effect. They will keep doing that, putting pressure on Taiwan. We need to keep on very high alert.”
Can Taiwan, as advanced as it is, really keep up with a juggernaut like China in the long run?
She responded, “We have pretty good cybersecurity infrastructure, and we are getting more resilient. There was an earthquake in Taiwan on April 3 of 7.3 magnitude. 25 years ago it took 10 days to get back Internet connections to earthquake-devastated areas. This time it took only a few hours.
“We are always preparing for the next big wave or earthquake. This also applies to Taiwan’s cybersecurity resilience.”
She said Taiwan has watched what Russia has done to try to isolate and shut off Ukraine’s critical infrastructure systems and communications, and is implementing lessons to protect Taiwan from similar potential attacks by China.
Elevating Israel-Taiwan relations?
Israel and Taiwan do not yet have as close a relationship in intelligence and cyber sharing as Jerusalem has with the “Five Eyes” – the US and other Anglo allies, but she said, “Taiwan is willing to share with like-minded allies and encourages not just relevant government agencies to work together but also civil society. This is an important component to combat the disinformation campaign.”
She noted that the Taiwanese minister of digital affairs came to Israel for Cyber Week this past year, the first Taiwanese minister to come to the event.
Also, “In democracies, it is sometimes harder for governments to take the lead. Then you need civil society and shared values. Israel has a very unique advantage and very robust civil society, is resilient, and has a very advanced hi-tech edge,” she added.
Besides Taiwan’s strong alliance with the US, she said, Taiwan has strong relations with Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, the UK, the EU, and others.
Due to Israel-Chinese sensitivities, “There is some limit on military and security cooperation, for sure, but we know nowadays a lot of issues can be cybersecurity and disinformation, and we hope there is still room for both sides to cooperate.
“If you look at the geographic distance, Taiwan and Israel are 8,300 kilometers away, but there are lots of similarities despite being far away. In the digital era, there is no geographic neighborhood; there are neighborhoods by values. We can continue to cooperate based on values which benefit both sides,” she said.
Lee concluded, “Taiwan and Israel are the testing ground for democratic values. If we cannot prevail and cannot uphold our values, there will be very serious repercussions globally.”
The Chinese Embassy in Israel responded to the allegations in the article saying, "We hope The Jerusalem Post can uphold the correct stance, see through the political agenda and malicious intentions of the 'Taiwan independence' separatists, refrain from being a platform to spread their disinformation, and stay away from disseminating false claims aiming to smear China."
"It is hoped that The Jerusalem Post could do more to facilitate cooperation between China and Israel, and contribute more to the friendship between the Chinese and Israeli people," stated the Chinese Embassy.