Taiwan Needs an AI Cyber Shield Now to Defend Against Invasion

Taiwan is currently unprepared to confront the China cyber threat during an invasion scenario. Its most recent conflict preparation exercise in June showcased marked improvements from past exercises regarding simulated cyberattacks on its critical infrastructure and civilian resilience. However, the speed at which offensive cyber technology is advancing, driven by new AI frontier models such as Anthropic’s Claude Mythos, is outpacing defensive cybersecurity countermeasures. This widening gap, combined with Taiwan’s existing vulnerabilities, increasingly leaves its networks exposed to Chinese exploitation. Taiwan needs to respond to these tectonic shifts now, investing in its own whole-of-society defensive AI “cyber shield.”

In July, the United Kingdom’s National Cyber Security Centre reported that it is in the process of developing its own AI-augmented cyber shield to improve the nation’s cybersecurity. The United Kingdom keenly understands the fragility of interconnected digital systems and how advances in technology necessitate the development of a defensive AI tool to meet the transforming cyber threats of today. Its cyber shield concept is intended to be fully implementable across government and participating private organizations to expand national cybersecurity interoperability. Every network connected to the cyber shield acts as a single node in a larger interconnected cybersecurity web.

A cyber shield would preemptively triage vulnerabilities, integrate real-time cyber threat intelligence, detect anomalous activity, and automate compromise remediation with minimal human interaction. Each network acts as a federated sensor for collecting incoming attack data, which is sent to the centralized AI cyber shield platform and communicated back to other partner networks for vulnerability patching. The attacked network’s AI agent would remediate the threat autonomously or provide network security administrators with options for remediation. This process should ideally only require a human operator when necessary to optimize available resources.

Why Taiwan? Why Now?

Taiwan would greatly benefit from a cyber shield now, given the constant intrusions into its cyberspace. China has been conducting cyberattacks against Taiwan since the late 1990s, increasingly encroaching on Taiwan’s digital sovereignty. Even though the AI race has only just begun, Taiwan’s government has indicated that China attempts an astonishing 2.6 million intrusions each day against its critical infrastructure. This is only the official known number of attacks, and the real number is likely much higher. China currently conducts a myriad of cyber actions against Taiwan, including exploitation for intelligence collection, the likely prepositioning of cyber capabilities for conflict, and manipulating the information environment to draw the Taiwanese populace closer to China in pursuit of eventual reunification.

Experts expect China to use cyber as a first-use weapon alongside its other coercive and kinetic actions during an invasion scenario. China views its cyber tools as a critical part of its “three warfares” strategy (public opinion, legal, and psychological). Cyber provides China with a primary mechanism to generate information superiority during both peacetime efforts to promote reunification and conflict. With China’s already advanced AI systems, it will likely look to further weaponize these capabilities in cyberspace to achieve its goals.

Chinese intrusions into Taiwanese critical infrastructure during a conflict scenario could wreak havoc. Taiwan’s government reports that China’s current cyber actions against Taiwan indicate that it could try to “disrupt or paralyze Taiwanese government and social functions.” In the future, offensive AI capabilities will give adversaries the ability to simultaneously attack across multiple sectors, such as energy and water, that are mutually dependent on each other. Disrupting even one of these sectors would cause cascading effects across all aspects of modern society. As advanced technology becomes more pervasive, Taiwan’s network and system administrators will increasingly become overwhelmed by China if they are not supplemented by a nationally integrated and autonomous AI cybersecurity system.

Taiwan does recognize the importance of AI societal integration and thus has put out a Ten AI Initiatives Promotion Plan that aims to enhance not just economic growth, but also public safety and protection of critical infrastructure. A cyber shield concept would fit nicely into this plan. Taiwan has also already made significant inroads into defense AI projects. Taiwan intends to deploy its integrated air, missile, and intelligence defense systems, known as the T-Dome, by 2027, with AI decision-enabling software to improve real-time aerial defenses. Other AI projects are more conceptual but are making progress. Taiwan and Shield AI recently agreed to begin the development of an AI tool that can pilot multiple unmanned systems simultaneously. These types of AI innovations indicate Taiwan is moving in the right direction. The next step is to develop an AI platform for cybersecurity.

This undertaking is sure to be an expensive project. Taiwan’s appetite and financial resources for such a project may be constrained. While it did approve a massive special defense budget of $780 billion NTD ($24 billion USD) in May to supplement its existing defense budget, it primarily focuses on current and future military weapons acquisition from the United States. The original budget, proposed at $1.25 trillion NTD ($39 billion USD), would have included additional funding for AI and autonomous systems, but those have since been left unfunded. While there may be other pools of money Taiwan can pull from, working with its international and industry partners on research and development (R&D) in the short term remains its best option.

Next Steps for Taiwan

The United Kingdom has indicated that it is actively looking for partners to help build out its cyber shield design. While it appears to be focused on domestic partnerships, if the United Kingdom expands its R&D to external countries, Taiwan would be an excellent candidate. Both Taiwan and the United Kingdom are infiltrated by malicious Chinese cyber actors on a recurrent basis. Given that China’s military has been preparing for an invasion of Taiwan for over 70 years, Taiwan is likely one of the most targeted countries by China in cyberspace. Taiwan could provide the United Kingdom with novel insights on these actors and how they operate to improve its cyber shield’s threat intelligence input. Beyond cyber, both countries also already cooperate in other areas of technology, including semiconductor research and digital trade information exchange. Expanding programs like these or creating new ones to include autonomous AI cybersecurity research could prove beneficial to both countries and give Taiwan insights into how it can develop its own domestic AI cyber shield.

If the United Kingdom partnership with Taiwan does not take hold, the United States government can fill the void and support Taiwan’s cyber shield initiative through its military’s research, development, testing, and evaluation (RDT&E) funding. RDT&E provisions are intended to provide both the recipient country and the United States with mutually beneficial strategic research on advanced defense technology. The United States’ Taiwan Security Cooperation Initiative, approved in February 2026, earmarks $1 billion USD in security cooperation funding available to Taiwan through September 2027. However, RDT&E funding is not part of this allocation.

In future budgetary provisions, Congress should look to advance AI cybersecurity research with Taiwan through RDT&E funding. Organizations such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which are at the forefront of American defense innovation, could use this money to lead the charge on joint research with Taiwan. Developing baseline research for a cyber shield with Taiwan would not only provide the United States with the R&D that could improve U.S. network defenses but also ensure that Taiwan has the building blocks to enable its own digital survival.

Beyond international partners, Taiwan may also turn to the private sector for partnership. Anthropic’s Project Glasswing, a collaborative effort between massive tech companies such as Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft, and Apple, utilizes Anthropic’s Mythos AI model to help identify system vulnerabilities. This project allows companies to patch the holes in their networks before Mythos is eventually released to the public. While Anthropic’s primary collaboration appears to be with industry partners and the U.S. government, it did indicate that it reached out to 150 other entities, including international organizations from 15 countries, in an effort to expand its partnerships. Despite the brief United States government export restriction for Mythos in June, Anthropic has since been permitted to share its AI models with the international community. If Taiwan meets Anthropic’s security requirements, the company may permit Taiwan to participate in future testing iterations. This may be a good low-cost way for Taiwan to gain the requisite knowledge to develop its own domestic AI cybersecurity system.

Regardless of who Taiwan partners with, expanding its pool of cyber relationships and international expertise will directly set it up for future success. Given how quickly AI cyber technology is advancing, action is urgently needed. Taiwan should develop its own domestic AI cyber shield now if it wants to retain its sovereignty and become a secure digital island.

Andrew Faulhaber is a visiting fellow in the Intelligence, National Security, and Technology Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.