1 May 2022

Ukraine Can Show Taiwan How to Win a Cyberwar With China

Omree Wechsler

With the amassing of Russian forces on Ukraine’s borders in January and February 2022, many observers believed that the world was about to witness the first true cyberwar. Despite these predictions, however, the Russian invasion was not accompanied by any major, successful cyber blows to Ukrainian critical infrastructure, and Russian distributed denial of service (DDoS) and wiper attacks largely failed to curb Ukraine’s ability to defend itself.

Prior to the invasion, many had warned that China was closely watching the events in Ukraine and, if Russia invaded, may be prompted to attack Taiwan. Given many Russian military failures, observers pointed out the challenges that China could face if and when it decides to attack Taiwan. While the Ukrainian case study shows that cyberwarfare is not to be paralleled with traditional kinetic warfare, it is worth asking whether Taiwan will face similar attempts to sabotage and disrupt its infrastructure and services.

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