Ukraine’s experience since February 2022 has produced a global reassessment of what civil defense means in a modern conflict involving a large, technologically capable adversary striking civilian infrastructure. The Ukrainian example is relevant to Taiwan not because the two situations are identical — they are quite different in geography, military balance, and the specific threats each faces — but because Ukraine demonstrated that societal resilience, the willingness and capacity of a civilian population to sustain normal life and maintain government function under sustained attack, is a military asset of the first order. Taiwan’s civil defense posture, measured against the Ukrainian example, has been improving from a low base and remains inadequate for the scenario its military is preparing to fight.

Taiwan is one of the most cyber-attacked places on earth. By the count maintained by its government’s cybersecurity agency, the island absorbs millions of cyberattack attempts each month, a significant portion of them attributable to Chinese state-linked actors. The volume is so high that it is used in Taiwanese government communications less as a warning than as a baseline: this is the normal operating environment. What varies is the sophistication and targeting of the attacks, which escalates during periods of political tension and which, in the event of military conflict, would transition from the persistent low-level campaign currently underway into a coordinated effort to degrade Taiwan’s military command and control, communications infrastructure, and civil society resilience simultaneously.