China Wants To Switch Off Taiwan’s Critical Infrastructure

Chinese cyberattacks against Taiwan’s critical infrastructure have risen over the past year, according to Taiwan’s National Security Bureau’s (NSB) annual assessment. In its efforts to undermine Taiwanese societal resilience, Beijing has increasingly targeted the country’s health care system and energy grid, particularly during major political events, in the hope of maximizing impact.

The January 4 report, which closely followed China’s latest military exercise around the island, highlights Beijing’s growing preparations for a cyber-enabled economic warfare (CEEW) campaign to force Taipei’s capitulation without resorting to an all-out invasion.

China Seeks To Disrupt Service Delivery Across the Island

The report notes that Chinese cyberattacks against Taiwan’s critical infrastructure have increased 6 percent over the past year, including strikes focused on the island’s energy sector, hospital networks, telecommunicators sector, and government agencies. According to the NSB, China has intensively targeted industrial control systems to hijack the power grid, stolen health care data to sell on the dark web, and attempted to penetrate sensitive communications systems to spy on Taiwanese citizens. Chinese cyber actors have paired attacks on these targets with attempts to infiltrate Taiwan’s semiconductor manufacturing industry and military-industrial base, aiming to steal commercial secrets to further its own technology and defense-related industries.

The report also highlighted Beijing’s efforts to coordinate separate hacking groups to execute a broad-ranging campaign against Taipei. The NSB found that nominally independent Chinese cyber syndicates, such as Flax Typhoon and APT41, have concentrated on different sectors, allowing each attacker to specialize their approach while escalating the potential for mass societal disruption.

Beijing’s Multiprong Attacks

China is ratcheting up pressure on Taiwan both online and off, launching ever larger military exercises around Taiwan while also increasing its cyber campaign. Along with covering more territory around the island than most previous exercises, China’s recent military drills have increasingly focused on preparing a potential blockade. That includes both cutting off commercial shipping from accessing to key ports and preventing the United States and its regional allies and partners from reinforcing Taipei.

Beijing ramps up its malicious cyber activity during periods of rising tensions, including during military exercises, signaling a willingness to use cyberattacks to sow and amplify divisions between Taiwan’s people. These efforts have been coupled with increasingly sophisticated cognitive warfare campaigns — China’s latest exercise featured an artificial intelligence (AI)-generated video showing advanced military capabilities targeting the island, building on ongoing social engineering campaigns to erode morale.

Washington Should Build Up Taiwan’s Resilience

As Beijing continues to target Taiwan across the cyber domain, the United States should prepare to counter a Chinese CEEW campaign aimed at Taipei. Washington should strengthen its efforts to work against a potential blockade by practicing convoy operations, pursuing a regional energy stockpile, assisting in strengthening the resilience of Taiwan’s critical infrastructure by deploying technical advisors, and signaling its resolve to deter Beijing well in advance of a potential crisis.

This effort will require Taiwan, the United States, and its allies and partners — particularly Australia — to strengthen their individual and collective cybersecurity efforts, while helping Taipei develop an advanced offensive cyber capability to establish deterrence against Beijing. Taiwan should match these efforts by strengthening public-private collaboration to ensure timely communication between private critical infrastructure operators and the government while prioritizing investments in resilience and recovery.

Jack Burnham is a senior research analyst in the China Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). For more analysis from Jack and FDD, please subscribe HERE. Follow Jack on X @JackBurnham802. Follow FDD on X @FDD. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.