Just as the last month of 2025 ended for Taiwanese politics with the US administration approving a military aid package worth around $ 11 billion for the defence of the island of Formosa (the largest arms package ever approved), the first month of the new year has so far been marked by a totally opposite tone.
Diverging priorities between the government and opposition forces, alongside recent annual reports, have shaped the domestic political consensus that previously characterized Taiwan’s approach toward regional security and PRC activities. These internal frictions challenge the implementation of the “porcupine strategy” that Taipei is adopting.
On January 9, the main opposition parties, the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), voted for the sixth time to block the revision of the Special Budget for Asymmetric Warfare in the Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee. This refusal to bring the bill before the committee prevents the Government from proceeding with the “special” budget procedure intended to enhance its self-defence and purchase American weapons.
The main reason given by the opposition states as follows: the current backlog of US weapons purchased but not yet delivered amounts to $ 32 billion. Therefore, according to the KMT, last Friday’s “no” vote in the Committee would serve to prevent waste and ensure that Taiwan doesn’t purchase systems that will not be delivered on time. However, according to the majority, delaying approval of the special budget would only worsen this backlog of deliveries.
The strategic rationale for these acquisitions is influenced by the technical specifications and tactical roles of the platforms under consideration: HIMARS batteries, Paladin howitzers, Javellins and modern drones are prioritized by the Ministry of National Defence for their potential to provide deterrence to the island, as they would allow for long-range strikes on mainland China’s ports of embarkation, mitigating the numerical disparity of Beijing’s fleet.
This political impasse described above comes just a few days after the Taiwanese government’s new policies to increase ship transparency and protect submarine cables around the island came into force. The seven amendments were approved in 2025 but only came into force on January 7, 2026, modifying certain provisions of the Telecommunications Management Act, the Law of Ships, and the Commercial Port Act. The new measures generally provide for higher fines and increase Taiwan’s control over its ports. More broadly, these measures aim to improve Taiwan’s defenses against the increasingly frequent assertive maritime presence of PRC with its both military and civilian vessels.
These amendments reflect global concerns about the particular vulnerability of these undersea critical infrastructure to sabotage and hybrid warfare attacks, which can have direct and indirect effects on the population and the island’s resilience. Taiwan’s strategic reliance on submarine cables is underscored by its status as a highly digitised island nation. As proof of this, ships affiliated with the PRC already caused cable breaks between Matsu and Taiwan in 2023 and between Penghu and Taiwan in 2025, demonstrating how fragile the connection between Taiwan and its outlying islands is.
Political analysts widely agree that “hybrid warfare” has become central to regional security discourse, whether in relation to the Baltic Sea or the South China Sea. They also agree that the island of Formosa was exposed to all possible asymmetric warfare strategies by China to avert (or postpone) a military invasion as much as possible. However, it was only on January 11 that Taiwan’s National Security Bureau (NSB) published its annual report on Beijing’s hybrid warfare efforts, particularly cognitive warfare, against Taipei. According to the NSB, these operations aim to divide the Taiwanese population and undermine public confidence in the local government. The 2025 report revealed a significant increase in the scope and “reach” of the PRC’s cognitive warfare efforts compared to 2024. Two aspects in particular are of concern to the Legislative Yuan.
First: the now global reach of Beijing’s campaign. This report highlights how the PRC has conducted disinformation efforts in more than 20 languages to undermine the administration’s credibility and to discourage any external support for the island in a war scenario.
The second concern highlighted by the Report is the PRC’s increasingly advanced capabilities in exploiting artificial intelligence to produce AI-generated disinformation. The growing synergy between the civil and military sectors in AI in general and cognitive warfare in particular is also cause for concern.
The NSB report illustrates a broader trend in the use of AI in disinformation campaigns, which is, likely the security of submarine cables, a source of concern not only for Taiwan but for the entire international community. It shows how the tools for destabilizing a government, polarizing the population and attacking supply chains (especially those which provide connectivity, which are proving to be much more vulnerable than previously thought) have increased exponentially in recent years.
Conclusion
These recent developments suggest that, in the last week alone, all the external and internal factors interacting with Taiwan’s strategic planning to counter the threat posed by China have become clear. These threats take different forms, operate at different levels, and could impact democratic stability in the most unexpected ways. And, as well as in the Ukraine war, the (close) competition between China and Taiwan allows to study and analyse the various forms through which hybrid warfare can be conducted.
Written by Biagio Capacchione
Recommended Further Reading:
https://understandingwar.org/research/china-taiwan/china-taiwan-update-january-16-2025
https://legrandcontinent.eu/fr/2026/01/08/cables-sous-marins-taiwan-strategie-chinoise-du-blackout/
https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2026/01/12/2003850453