Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

The flight path of two US Air Force B-52s is pictured in an image from the Aircraft Spots Twitter account. It shows the two aircraft entering Taiwan’s flight information region in the East China Sea on Wednesday.
Photo: screen grab from Twitter

Ministry of National Defense officials yesterday neither confirmed nor denied that two US Air Force B-52s entered the nation’s flight information region (FIR) on Wednesday on a mission from their base in Guam, with experts saying it might have been a US response to flights around Taiwan and its surrounding islands by Chinese H-6 bombers.

Spreading disinformation to influence public opinion is wrong, and yet it has always been a part of the politician’s toolkit. Vested interests benefit by it, but its overall effect is to harm democracy.

Disinformation also hurts individuals, often with tragic consequences, such as in the suicide last year of Su Chii-cherng (蘇啟誠), then director-general of the Osaka branch of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Japan.