DEFENSE/Taiwan-U.S. defense forum focuses on international tech collaboration

Taipei, June 7 (CNA) Taiwan is seeking to strengthen its national defense autonomy by collaborating internationally on key technologies, participants at a Taiwan-U.S. symposium said Thursday.

While Taiwan possesses substantial hardware capabilities and an abundance of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), further collaboration with allied nations is essential to overcome the current bottlenecks, several sources told CNA.

The technologies of particular interest are materials, cybersecurity, propulsion, and artificial intelligence, they said after the annual Taiwan-U.S. Defense Industry Forum, which representatives from 27 American defense contractors attended.

During the closed-door event, the U.S. delegation, which included former U.S. Marine Corps officer Steven Rudder, showed particular interest in Taiwanese indigenous defense projects, sources told CNA.

Rudder is currently a nonresident senior fellow in the Indo-Pacific Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council's Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

He retired as the commanding general of Marine Forces Pacific in September 2022 after leading an organization of 80,000 people responsible for all Marine operations in the Asia Pacific, according to his Atlantic Council biography.

While the forum aimed to facilitate networking between the local industry and its American counterparts, some participants expressed dissatisfaction with the limited opportunity for smaller Taiwanese companies to introduce themselves, sources said.

Instead, larger manufacturers such as Aerospace Industrial Development Corp. and CSBC Corp., Taiwan enjoyed the spotlight, sources added.

Organized by the Taipei-based Taiwan Defense Industry Development Association and Arlington-based US-Taiwan Business Council, the forum also saw the participation of U.S. contractors such as Lockheed Martin Corp, Raytheon Co, and BAE Systems PLC.

Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲), a research fellow at Taiwan's state-funded Institute for National Defense and Security Research who attended the forum, said Taiwanese firms must do more to enhance corporate management.

Taiwan's hardware manufacturing industry is already well-established, but to boost its capabilities in mass production it needs to align with international regulatory frameworks such as the Wassenaar Arrangement.

This would mean implementing stronger confidentiality protections and process security and technology control measures, Su said.