UPDATE — this extends our earlier coverage: Severed Cable, Bigger Fleet: China Rehearses a Taiwan Blockade

Our earlier report tracked a severed undersea cable near Taiwan and a build-up of Chinese naval activity east of the island — the route U.S. and Japanese reinforcements would use in a crisis — both surfacing during Han Kuang 42, Taiwan's largest civil-defense exercise.

On 23 August, the 68th anniversary of China's 1958 artillery bombardment of Kinmen that opened the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis, President Lai Ching-te invoked Taiwan's guiding doctrine that peace with China must rest on strength, per The Straits Times and Internazionale.

What is new is institutional, not rhetorical. Nikkei Asia reports that Taiwan's National Security Council — an office once dismissed as a martial-era "government within a government" — has become the central coordinator of defense reform, societal-resilience planning and diplomacy toward Beijing. Secretary-General Joseph Wu is the figure steering that role, which Nikkei likens to the council's function during the 1995–96 Taiwan Strait missile crisis under strategist Ding Mau-shih.

Concretely, per Nikkei, the council is coordinating a proposed 18% jump in Taiwan's 2027 defense budget to a record high, a tougher edition of the Han Kuang drills that now rehearses internet throttling, and eased rules for foreign satellite operators such as Starlink.

Why it matters: deterrence is shifting from ad hoc responses to a coordinated, institutionalized posture — arriving just as Beijing tests the naval and infrastructure pressure points that posture is meant to withstand.
  • Whether Taiwan's opposition-controlled legislature funds the defense-budget increase intact.
  • Signs of NSC coordination visible in the next Han Kuang cycle or Chinese PLA drill.
  • Whether satellite options such as Starlink advance, easing pressure from future cable-cutting.