FT: Taiwan plans domestic satellite champion to resist any China attack

Taiwan is courting investors to help it establish its own satellite communications provider, inspired by the role Elon Musk’s Starlink has played in the war in Ukraine, as Taipei ramps up efforts to fortify itself against a potential assault from China, Report informs via the Financial Times.

Taiwan is in preliminary talks with several domestic and international investors to raise funds for the project, which the country’s space agency, known as TASA, wants to spin out of an existing satellite division, according to three people familiar with the situation.

“We are going to spin our low-Earth orbit satellite communications project off into a company,” said a senior official at TASA. People familiar with the talks said the government wanted to retain a significant minority stake in the venture.

The project is part of Taiwan’s broader efforts to build a communications infrastructure that could survive an attack by China. Beijing claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has made increasing threats over the use of force to bring the country under its control.

“We look at the Russian invasion of Ukraine and how Starlink has been used very successfully,” said Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s digital minister.

“Our primary concern . . . is facilitating the societal resilience, to make sure for example that journalists can send videos to . . . international viewers even during a large-scale disaster,” Tang said, adding that the system would also support “telephoning and videoconferencing — think [Ukrainian president Volodymyr] Zelenskyy’s daily addresses.”

Starlink, the mobile internet satellite constellation operated by Musk’s SpaceX, has helped Kyiv maintain communications with its forces despite Russian attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure.

Tang said it would take “a few years” for TASA’s planned service to start operating. In the meantime, her ministry is experimenting with non-geostationary satellite receivers in 700 locations around Taiwan to guarantee bandwidth in the event of war or disasters.