And they've been saying it opens the door for possible Chinese actions to destabilize Taiwan.

I think it depends.

I think one of the bigger problems that Taiwan kind of has on its own is, and you get this with like any sort of liberal democracy, right? It's not just Taiwan.

It doesn't necessarily matter if one happens to be in the West or not be in the West.

I think the biggest set that Taiwan sort of has is an inability on its own to sort of figure out what does it mean for broader sort of identity? You get that within the different coalitions.

What does it mean to sort of be like Taiwanese in a sort of harmonious sense.

And the political sort of discord that you're having is kind of a downstream impact of that to an extent.

At that point, he would have held up this package for quite a while, and obviously it sends a message about how seriously America, supposedly our security partner, although I guess that's ambiguous, but it really raises the question, how much should Taiwan be relying on America?

and do they not exist on the water under the water in the air i mean there's a wide variety of these things why aren't we going just you know hog wild on this

i would argue that taiwan is starting to taiwan's really starting to to put in a prominent way the use of unmanned systems or platforms all types of drones, like you mentioned, aerial, underwater, surface, ground, to be able to help with a bunch of different issues related to Taiwan's own security, right? I mean, a lot of this goes back to this policy that was sort of like birthed several years ago by a former commander, or sorry, by the then commander of U.S., what was then Indo-Pacific Command, saying that Taiwan needs like a hellscape strategy to be able to defend itself and that unmanned systems would be able to do that.

Or just broader, not even Taiwan, but just the U.S. in the Indo-Pacific region in general and Taiwan being the sort of crux for that, right? And as we could see in Ukraine, especially this recent Ukraine Independence Day parade, where the Ukrainian military, Ukrainian armed forces, did a full sort of military parade, European-style military parade, similar to what you would see for Bastille Day in France or Victory Day in Russia, where the majority of systems that it showed were unmanned and included phases on the ground, in the air, and in the water.

So there's a couple of different reasons for that, right? One, we're seeing with modern warfare that a treble mass is becoming more and more important.

There's a big debate about whether or not drones can facilitate or hinder so-called maneuver warfare so the ability to sort of like move around enemies and whatnot um and also a big debate about what does it mean to have unmanned systems be the focus of one's warfare like for example the ukrainians have already done amphibious landing or amphibious operations where you've got a unmanned surface vehicle or or vessel dropping off an unmanned ground vehicle would cover from an unmanned aerial vehicle to go after Russian forces along the coast of Ukraine that's occupied near Crimea.

But doesn't that, as much as I'm wonderfully in favor of not having the actual human have to go out and die, it's much better to have this machine crash and whatever, you need a lot of operators.

A lot of operators, and depending on the type of drone, potentially data centers and a whole lot of computing power, potentially.

I mean, we're starting to see a point where like front or edge artificial intelligence.

Why aren't we going just, you know, hog wild on this?

I would argue that Taiwan is starting to.

Taiwan's really starting to put in a prominent way the use of unmanned systems or platforms, all types of drones, like you mentioned, aerial, underwater, surface, ground.

um to be able to help with a bunch of different issues related to taiwan's own security right i mean a lot of this goes back to this policy that was sort of like birthed uh several years ago by a then commander of u.s what was then indo-pacific command saying that taiwan needs like a hellscape strategy to be able to defend itself and then unmanned systems would be able to do that or just broader not even taiwan but just the us in the indo-pacific region in general, and Taiwan being the sort of crux for that, right? So understanding that drones, and as we could see in Ukraine, especially this recent Ukraine Independence Day parade, where the Ukrainian military, Ukrainian armed forces, did a full sort of military parade, European-style military parade, similar to what you would see for Bastille Day in France or Victory Day in Russia, where the majority of systems that it showed were unmanned.

and included phases on the ground, in the air, and in the water.

So there's a couple of different reasons for that, right? One, we're seeing with modern warfare that a treble mass is becoming more and more important.

There's a big debate about whether or not drones can facilitate or hinder so-called maneuver warfare.

You need a lot of operators.

And I'm just wondering, Bryce, what do you think about how defense analysts and people in the U.S. think about the Taiwanese politics of budgeting, especially as it relates to defense budgets?

Yeah, no, that's a really good question.

I think if you pay attention to not just the various congressional delegations that have come to Taiwan over the summer, which I think there's been three, and then there's been two publicly acknowledged congressional staff dells, every single one of these delegations has consistently brought up drones as a way of Taiwan showing it can defend itself.

I think a really interesting remark about that was when retired Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery was here in April, and I actually moderated a panel that he was on in the Legislative UN, and one thing that he brought up within the realm of drones and the special defense budget, specifically back then when the drone portion of what has been passed for the foreign military sales defense budget, special defense budget, back when those were the same or being discussed about being the same, was that many in D.C. don't understand the intricacies of Taiwanese politics, nor should they.

They just know that Taiwan isn't, quote-unquote, pulling its own weight or the perception of that.

So even though I do think the drone budget that they proposed, ironically enough, it's a good point to point out that the cash handout that's going to be coming around early next year potentially, and also could be doubled, is far more than the six-year or till 2035 special budget for drones.

I do think That maybe some of the calculus could be that, you know, obviously the law administration knows that they're coming into a... a local and county election right now? No, not election buying.

From your expertise on defense and U.S. politics, do you think that going forward, I mean, how important today is Korea going to be for Taiwan? Should we be concerned?

But this year, there were visibly military units in parts of Taiwan where you normally wouldn't see them.

Yeah.

No, that's true.

And frankly speaking, I mean, even last year as well, right? So I remember being here for Hong Kong last summer and staying in Kaohsiung, and there was a baseball diamond in the center of Kaohsiung that was close to the hotel I was staying at.

And I remember asking a classmate from the military academy here, I went for a semester when I was a cadet about 15 years ago, someone who...

Like, what's going on? There's a platoon at this baseball diamond.

And their response was that part of it was making sure that the military could respond to open spaces to prevent PLA special forces or airborne from coming in and taking over a place like a baseball diamond so that it didn't become a staging ground.

But it was all staged.

Is there a measurable impact on the doctrine here, on the development of technology?

Yeah, I mean, you can see a lot of different movement from within the Taiwan government, specifically the Ministry of National Defense, towards wanting to learn lessons from what's happening with Ukraine in a few different ways.

One way that that could be coming up, or rather is manifesting, right, is the push to want to acquire more drones in general.

So you're talking about like FP drones.

If you look at the special defense budget, which I'm sure will come up later, you can look at the number of drones that that puts an emphasis on, right? Another aspect of where this is coming on is where the military is changing.

So Taiwan has announced its Defense Innovation Office, which is supposed to look at trying to acquire defense technologies for the Ministry of National Defense.

You know, now there's a UAV park in Jiayi.

What can Taiwan learn from countries like, let's say, Canada or Poland?