US Representative Mike Waltz, who was nominated by US president-elect Donald Trump as national security adviser, recently emphasized the importance of Taiwan in advanced chip production and global trade.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) has been “openly talking about the decline of America” and “replacing America as a global leader, the decline of Western values,” Waltz said during a Reagan Foundation event in California last month to promote his book, Hard Truths: Think and Lead Like a Green Beret.
Waltz said Xi aims to replace Western values with “essentially a techno surveillance state dictatorship” and described Taiwan as Xi’s “next step” after taking control over Tibet and Hong Kong.
Photo: AP
The lawmaker also warned of the “implications” of China taking over Taiwan.
“Not only would they control 80 percent of the world’s most advanced computer chips, if you look at the geography, they would [also] control the shipping lanes into Japan, South Korea [and] Southeast Asia, [which is] about 50 percent of global GDP,” Waltz said. “The stakes are enormous.”
Waltz, a retired colonel, was the first US Green Beret elected to congress in 2018, after serving multiple tours in Afghanistan, the Middle East and Africa. He is a well-known China hawk who serves in the US House of Representatives’ China Task Force that seeks to address the Chinese Communist Party’s influence.
China has been building its military, and their navy and aerospace forces are now larger than the US’, Waltz said, adding that the Chinese government was “tripling — not just doubling — the size of their nuclear arsenal.”
Future US presidents should not just think in traditional terms of “tank to tank, ship to ship,” but also in terms of cyberattacks — such as those conducted by Volt Typhoon, a state-sponsored hacking group, he said.
Waltz said Volt Typhoon is not just spying, but also putting “cyber time bombs into our system.”
“The first shot in every war game now is fired in space and in cyber,” he added.
An undersea cable to Penghu County has been severed, the Ministry of Digital Affairs said today, with a Chinese-funded ship suspected of being responsible. It comes just a month after a Chinese ship was suspected of severing an undersea cable north of Keelung Harbor. The National Communications and Cyber Security Center received a report at 3:03am today from Chunghwa Telecom that the No. 3 cable from Taiwan to Penghu was severed 14.7km off the coast of Tainan, the Ministry of Digital Affairs said. The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) upon receiving a report from Chunghwa Telecom began to monitor the Togolese-flagged Hong Tai (宏泰)
A cat named Mikan (蜜柑) has brought in revenue of more than NT$10 million (US$305,390) for the Kaohsiung MRT last year. Mikan, born on April 4, 2020, was a stray cat before being adopted by personnel of Kaohsiung MRT’s Ciaotou Sugar Refinery Station. Mikan was named after a Japanese term for mandarin orange due to his color and because he looks like an orange when curled up. He was named “station master” of Ciaotou Sugar Refinery Station in September 2020, and has since become famous. With Kaohsiung MRT’s branding, along with the release of a set of cultural and creative products, station master Mikan
RISING TOURISM: A survey showed that tourist visits increased by 35 percent last year, while newly created attractions contributed almost half of the growth Changhua County’s Lukang Old Street (鹿港老街) and its surrounding historical area clinched first place among Taiwan’s most successful tourist attractions last year, while no location in eastern Taiwan achieved a spot in the top 20 list, the Tourism Administration said. The listing was created by the Tourism Administration’s Forward-looking Tourism Policy Research office. Last year, the Lukang Old Street and its surrounding area had 17.3 million visitors, more than the 16 million visitors for the Wenhua Road Night Market (文化路夜市) in Chiayi City and 14.5 million visitors at Tainan’s Anping (安平) historical area, it said. The Taipei 101 skyscraper and its environs —
Taiwan on Friday said a New Zealand hamburger restaurant has apologized for a racist remark to a Taiwanese customer after reports that it had first apologized to China sparked outrage in Taiwan. An image posted on Threads by a Taiwanese who ate at Fergburger in Queenstown showed that their receipt dated Sunday last week included the words “Ching Chang,” a racial slur. The Chinese Consulate-General in Christchurch in a statement on Thursday said it had received and accepted an apology from the restaurant over the incident. The comment triggered an online furor among Taiwanese who saw it as an insult to the
RSS