Taiwan’s resilience test moves beyond drills to a broader question of dependence

Taiwan’s latest resilience exercises are testing not only whether society can function when communications falter, but whether an economy deeply intertwined with global supply chains, energy imports and strategic industries can withstand shocks without becoming hostage to its own concentration.

Testing what happens when communications fail

Taiwan has begun a new round of urban resilience and air-defense exercises that place greater emphasis on what happens when critical civilian systems are disrupted.

The most conspicuous innovation is the first large-scale exercise simulating a slowdown in mobile internet services. The exercise, conducted on Aug. 10 across seven cities and counties in central Taiwan, is scheduled to be repeated in seven northern jurisdictions on Aug. 13.

Rather than shutting down the network entirely, authorities are deliberately restricting mobile bandwidth to simulate circumstances in which communications infrastructure is damaged or network capacity becomes severely constrained.

Taiwan's Cabinet, the Executive Yuan, stated that medical communications, transportation and emergency calls to the 110 police and 119 fire and ambulance hotlines should continue operating.

Basic voice calls, text messages and emergency communications are expected to remain available, while data-intensive functions such as video streaming, video calls, mobile payments and cloud synchronization may be impaired.

The broader five-day urban resilience exercise, conducted in conjunction with Taiwan's Han Kuang military exercises, also encompasses warning dissemination, evacuation, traffic controls and disaster relief.

The Executive Yuan pointed out that the communications component is intended not merely to test official contingency measures, but also to encourage households to prepare alternative means of communication.

Yet the exercise raises a question considerably larger than telecommunications: what, precisely, makes Taiwan resilient?

Resilience is not the same as redundancy

Konrad Young (楊光磊), a former R&D director at TSMC, said at an Aug. 4 event held by international think tank CAPRI that resilience must be considered at the level of the entire industrial ecosystem.

For a company such as TSMC, he said, disruption does not have to strike the company directly to have consequences.

Geopolitical tensions, regulatory changes or other forces affecting upstream suppliers or downstream customers can ultimately reverberate through the company itself, Young said.

Economist and former Deputy Foreign Minister Roy Lee Chun (李淳) noted at the same event that Taiwan’s celebrated economic model has produced an extraordinary degree of global dependence on the island.

Lee stated that roughly 94% of the world’s advanced semiconductors and more than 80% of AI servers now depend on Taiwan.

He added that what was once an advantage can become a vulnerability when resilience increasingly means reducing excessive concentration, dependence and exposure to a single source.

Lee said the lesson became unmistakable during the pandemic, when shortages of masks and other necessities exposed the fragility of global supply chains. More recently, China’s dominance of rare-earth supply has reinforced the same concern.

“Economic resilience is not only protection but also safeguarding partnerships,” Lee said, arguing that Taiwan should view resilience not merely as an exercise in avoiding risk, but as an active effort to create value and preserve relationships.

Energy: More capacity does not necessarily mean more resilience

The same distinction applies to electricity.

Lisa Hsieh I-yun (謝依芸), an associate professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at National Taiwan University, said at the same event that advances in low-carbon technologies have expanded options for generating clean electricity, storing energy, electrifying transportation and forecasting changing conditions.

However, Hsieh cautioned, forecasts will never be perfect. “Resilience begins where prediction ends,” she said.

Hsieh stated that a genuinely resilient power system therefore needs diverse supplies, adequate reserves, stronger networks, flexibility and coordinated restoration.

Distributed resources can form part of that architecture, she said, but Taiwan should not put all its faith in any single solution.

“Don’t put all your eggs in the same basket,” she said, emphasizing the need for backup systems and scenario planning.

Her broader warning is that resilience should be measured by what society can actually rely upon during disruption, rather than simply by how much generation capacity has been installed.

The social dimension of resilience

David Chiang (蔣大巍), Energy Collaborative Program Lead for Taiwan at global industry association SEMI, added that SEMI has long been pushing for stronger energy-resilience policies and that momentum is building, although he sometimes worries that action may come too late.

He said that he is encouraged, however, by the growing attention paid to the issue by younger leaders.

Taiwan, Chiang said, has institutions capable of supporting fundamental energy strategies. The broader consensus should not be to declare one particular type of energy source or technology inherently good or bad, but to expand renewable energy as a whole while reducing carbon emissions.

Yet energy resilience also has a distributional dimension, Chiang noted.

Taiwan’s semiconductor industry consumes substantial quantities of electricity and water, raising questions about how resources are allocated when industrial demand competes with agriculture and local communities.

Chiang said existing financial compensation mechanisms are insufficient. Local perspectives should be incorporated earlier into the design and implementation of policies, alongside measures such as improved agricultural methods and stronger community participation.

Hsieh similarly warned that energy redistribution can create energy poverty, making fairness among industries, communities and other stakeholders part of the resilience equation.

Taiwan’s latest drills may last only 30 minutes at a time. But the underlying challenge is much longer-term: resilience cannot be achieved simply by preparing for the moment a system fails.

It requires designing an economy, energy system and society capable of absorbing shocks, adapting to them and continuing to create value afterward.