Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Deepfakes pose risk for the election

Weber Lai 賴祥蔚

Vice Premier Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) was accused of having an “illicit affair” a few months ago, after a video showing a man, who resembled Cheng, entering a hotel room with a woman was circulated online. In response, Cheng has said multiple times that the man in the video was not him, and he has asked his lawyer to file a defamation lawsuit to prove his innocence.

The Criminal Investigation Bureau, which was supposed to determine whether the video was generated by artificial intelligence (AI), said that the result was “inconclusive.”

Nothing is deep-green about Ko

Lai Yen-cheng 賴彥丞

Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman and presidential candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) recently reiterated that he is “deep-green at heart,” a remark that pro-Taiwan supporters found dubious or even held in disdain.

The “deep green” faction is a pro-indigenous force that promotes Taiwanese sovereignty by putting Taiwan’s interests first. That Ko had the audacity to make a series of “anti-indigenous” moves, such as saying the “two sides of the Strait are one family,” condemning the idea of countering China and safeguarding Taiwan, proposing to revive plans of a cross-strait service trade agreement with China and partnering with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for his own political interests, have shown that he is not as “deep green” as he claims to be, for these were all intolerable actions in the eyes of pro-Taiwan supporters.

Countering CCP cognitive warfare

Taipei Times Editorial

Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) on Tuesday called on democracies to cooperate on countering China’s cognitive warfare efforts.

Speaking at a policy forum held by Taipei-based think tank Doublethink Lab and the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, Wu said that China was “attempting to create social division and mistrust to undermine [Taiwan’s] democratic system.”

Shiori Kanno, a former parliamentary member of the Japanese Diet, also spoke at the event, saying that the issue of Taiwan’s security had been receiving greater attention in Japan and argued that a conflict in the Taiwan Strait would impact Japan’s economy.

Young voters must learn to discern

Yang Tsung-li楊宗澧

The generation born or raised after the lifting of martial law in 1987 was the first to experience democratization and enjoy the initial fruits of Taiwan’s freedom. Many of the generation following those who witnessed martial law lifted are now high-school and college students. The political background in which they grew up was the second eight-year governance of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).

Taiwan’s democracy has issues that need to be addressed in each generation, but the social environment of this latest voting-age generation is freer and more open. If they take universal values such as democracy, freedom and human rights for granted, then they are testing Taiwan’s democratic resilience and putting these staples at risk.

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