On Dec. 27 last year, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) announced that conscription would be restored to one year for male Taiwanese born after Jan. 1, 2005. The reform won the support of the majority of citizens, while the US and Japan indicated approval of Taiwan’s resolve to boost its self-defense and deterrence capabilities.
The reform included bolstering training, raising wages for conscripts, recognizing mandatory service under the labor pension system and studying how the education system can be made more flexible to help young men effectively use their time and build careers.
The training program’s content would also be upgraded to include the use of drones, Stinger, Javelin and Kestrel missiles, and other new weapons to meet the needs of modern warfare.
This paradigm shift is laudable, but the mainstay of the policy seems to be centered on hard military skills.
Modern warfare is no longer restricted to two armies clashing. The possession of advanced weapons is a prerequisite, but warfare has become more complex, all-encompassing and diverse. Combat has spilled over from military and political warfare to “smokeless battlefields” such as the economy, finance, trade, diplomacy, public opinion, cognitive warfare, information, cyber and technology.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shown that advances in technology have ushered in a new type of warfare, and reforms should take that into account.
Cyberattacks are easy to launch, but difficult to defend. As it takes time to train professionals, the government should recruit conscripts learned in computer science for cyberwarfare training and make them members of information security teams. They could monitor cyberattacks from China, develop cyberwarfare tools, create a training environment for information security, help the public sector with information security and work with local governments to promote information on security.
As cognitive warfare is the extension of psychological warfare and political warfare beyond the battlefield, it can help boost the morale of Taiwanese.
However, if the enemy launches a cognitive attack and Taiwan does not defend it properly, there could be conflict and social unrest that could lead to social division, civil dysfunction and a stagnation of industrial development.
Similarly, the government could enlist conscripts with cognitive warfare-related backgrounds for additional training, establish a “myth-busting” team to counter China’s cognitive attacks and work with civic groups to design compelling, easy-to-follow activities to raise the public’s awareness about cognitive warfare and media literacy to spot disinformation.
Aside from those soft military skills, the government could also take other fields into account, such as electronic warfare, data analysis and big data, combined warfare with artificial intelligence, reinforcement of basic infrastructure and defense of combat supplies, natural resources, and transport systems.
As soft military skills are different from those needed in field operations, the government might have to decrease the intensity of physical training.
Tsai said that “under this new system, the one year spent in the military will not be wasted.”
Making the proposed changes, this goal can be reached. After completing service, the skills acquired in the military can turn conscripts into much sought-after talents, leaders in civic military groups or elites in the all-out defense system. The government must look into the research, planning and implementation of soft skills needed in various battlefield scenarios.
Eugene Yeh is a former director-general of the National Center for High-performance Computing.
Translated by Rita Wang
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