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.

The most important battle in a Taiwan conflict may be fought before the first missile is launched, on platforms that do not appear in military order-of-battle assessments, by actors who are never uniformed and never identifiable. China’s information operations against Taiwan are not a supplement to its military strategy. They are the precondition for making the military strategy work. A Taiwanese population that has been sufficiently demoralized, divided, and confused about what is actually happening and who can be trusted is a population that provides less political support for resistance, less capacity for civil defense mobilization, and less coherent pressure on allied governments to intervene.