EXPERT Q&A — Taiwan’s recent Han Kuang military exercises tested the island’s responses to a potential full-scale Chinese invasion. The drills not only simulated military strikes and blockade elements, but also gray zone warfare operations like cyberattacks. Taiwan was reminded again of that range of Chinese tactics in a recent recall vote, which the government said was preceded by a major Chinese disinformation and misinformation campaign.
These issues are all top of mind for Rear Admiral (Ret.) Mark Montgomery, former Executive Director of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission and a Senior Director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). RADM Montgomery joined The Cipher Brief live from Taiwan, where he was running tabletop exercises based on a potential invasion by Chinese forces. Our conversation has been lightly edited.
The Cipher Brief: What is driving the narrative at this moment in Taiwan?
RADM Montgomery: For me, the big questions here right now are, how does Taiwan satisfy President Trump's demands for increased attention and focus on defense and on security? How does Taiwan prove itself to be the kind of ally that President Trump wants to support? He has a pretty high - but also moving - standard of what that is. So one of the biggest things they're working on right now is making sure that this year's defense budget hits 3% for defense. I think they'll get there fairly easily because of some changes in how they look at things.
And then, how do they maximize the support they get from the United States to build a counter-intervention force that can hold the Chinese Communist Party off long enough for the United States to come over the hill in any kind of future conflict, if necessary?
The Cipher Brief: What are some of the things they're doing to really shore up defense spending in particular?
RADM Montgomery: They were counting a certain way, not the NATO way. They weren't counting pensions for military personnel. They weren't counting the Coast Guard; they have a very active Coast Guard, which will all be sunk in war. It kind of meets the NATO definition. Once you add that in, they're getting close to 3%.
Then they're also putting in a lot of foreign military sale packages. Most of those won't generate budget requirements for one to two to three years, but it's great to see them doing that because they're going to need 3% or higher next year, 4% the year after that, and eventually 5%, maybe three years from now. I think that's where President Lai is headed, so you have to get things in order. I’ve heard rumors that there are 10 or a dozen foreign military sales packages that are working their way through the system. That's fantastic work by the United States and Taiwan to get that moving.
And then, we've got to make sure that they're buying the right equipment. The Army is the center of gravity in a counter intervention. That's really important. But the Air Force and Navy are really important in the phase-zero gray zone conflict that's going on all the time. So they've got to buy a little bit of each. This is the problem when you have an enemy that's 22 times the size of you - GDP wise - and even more so population wise. So you really have to prepare.
And the final thing they're buying is readiness. In other words, paying for battalions to travel to U.S. training facilities, paying for the right amount of ammunition for live fire training. That kind of readiness bill is really required. It's something the U.S. is very good at and we budget for properly. Most militaries don't. So Taiwan needs to start doing that.
The Cipher Brief: Something we focus on a lot at The Cipher Brief is what’s happening in the gray zone. We've seen a significant increase in the number of gray zone attacks, particularly using disinformation, misinformation around an election that was just held in Taiwan. You don't see any letting up on these gray zone-type of attacks to influence people, right?
RADM Montgomery: Not at all. In fact, the tabletop we're doing here is reminiscent of that. The cross-strait invasion, the really heavy blockade, those are the most dangerous scenarios. I'm confident that PACOM and the Department of Defense are really working hard on the nuts and bolts of that to determine the right things to buy. That's important. But that's not the most likely scenario.
The most likely scenario is exactly what you're talking about. Cyber-enabled economic warfare in the gray zone. That's really across financial services, energy, telecommunications, those big three critical infrastructures. It’s political influence. Maybe it's contacting a company and saying don't sell LNG to the Taiwanese. It's things like anchors dropping magically on submarine cables. It's not allowing remittance payments for financial services to Taiwan from mainland China. And then it's enhanced by cyber and influence operations trying to increase the pressure on Taiwan’s society.
It’s the launching of all of these attacks across all of these big three infrastructures and their supporting infrastructures like water and health care. Across all that, you build up the pressure. What you're trying to do is break the societal resilience of Taiwan without doing much damage to the island itself. To me, that's the most likely campaign and the one we have to prepare for. And it sits squarely in the gray zone.
The Cipher Brief: Do you think once China pulls the trigger on a forcible invasion of Taiwan that these are the first levers that they really pull?
RADM Montgomery: Certainly if they are going to do a cross-strait invasion, they'll be using some of these tools ahead of time and at the same time. But I honestly think the most likely scenario is that they just keep maximizing the pressure, making sure the U.S. doesn't respond and help, but making things uncomfortable for Taiwan, then waiting and then starting it again. It's the old ‘boiling frog’ analogy that you don't really notice how hot the water's gotten until it kills you. It’s that Taiwan gets in a position that they're unable to respond to this and the United States is in a position where we're never interested in responding to it because nothing trips our red line, so to speak. That's what worries me the most.
I think the only thing that stops Chairman Xi from doing that right now is that he has got to know that if this thing escalates, is he really ready to win? And as long as he's not sure, he won’t start this most likely because he can't risk escalation — particularly with our current president, who is, to say the least, unpredictable.
From my perspective, it's a very interesting timeframe in Taiwan. I think we're in the last year or two before China really puts the pressure on hard. So this is their last chance to really address these issues, to work with the United States, to develop workarounds on energy problems, on communications problems, on financial services problems.
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The Cipher Brief: What are some of the specific lessons learned that you're able to share from some of these tabletop exercises?
RADM Montgomery: What we’ve learned from this is that there are things you can do ahead of time to prevent or mitigate the effect of Chinese pressure. And there are things you can do ahead of time to rapidly recover. You've got to invest in all of those across every infrastructure, across every attack vector. That's a lot of work. And that's why President Lai set up a task force on societal resilience to get exactly at this issue.
The U.S. Navy and the Taiwan Navy ought to be actively practicing escort operations to bring Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) ships in and out, should China try to impose some kind of administrative rule that blocks LNG ships going into Taiwan’s ports. If you pre-establish that I'm going to escort them in — you know I'm going to do it, I show it to you at exercises — and then I do it, it's not escalatory. But to stop a convoy by bumping or sinking or attacking a U.S. Navy ship would be a drastic escalatory maneuver. So this is a way of us imposing strategic challenges on our adversary instead of them putting these wicked problems on us.
The Cipher Brief: The burning question anytime anyone talks about the issue of a forced Chinese invasion of Taiwan is ‘what is President Xi's intent and what is his timeline?’ And that's something that only one person really knows. So, the rest of us are guessing. What are you guessing in terms of intent and timeline right now?
RADM Montgomery: That's a great way to put it. The intent is that there's a little bit that's still in the eye of the beholder. In other words, I can't account for Xi getting a visit from an oncologist and let’s say things change dramatically for him and he decides I'm going to resolve an issue. But given everything staying normal medically and in terms of leadership stability for him personally, 2027 was a reasonable year to predict back in 2021. With the lines of U.S. and allied capabilities being kind of linear, and China experiencing exponential growth, 2027 was a reasonable year.
But what you need to understand is that other countries get to vote. The United States voted. The U.S. has spent more money on defense, particularly after the illegal invasion of Ukraine by Russia, when we began to spend money very specifically on munitions, which led to a big shortfall.
The Japanese are looking over a five-year period to double their defense budget. The Australians have increased their defense budget. The Taiwanese have increased their defense budget. We haven't increased our defense budget. We've increased our focus though on some very specific to the Pacific issues.
Now, I think the line where China can impose its will on a coalition of countries in a cross-strait invasion is probably in the early 2030s.
The Cipher Brief: China has announced that it will join Pacific naval exercises with Russia this month. The Chinese National Defense Ministry says the two countries will conduct joint sea 2025 naval exercises near Vladivostok, followed by a joint maritime patrol in the Pacific. What do you take from that?
RADM Montgomery: It's obvious to me that there has been a development. The Axis of Authoritarians have become closer — that's Russia, China, North Korea and Iran. And in terms of peer militaries, Russia and China are the closest. So it's not surprising they are doing exercises together. And if I would have looked back 10 years ago at an exercise like this, I would have just yawned because it would have been a very basic exercise without much intent to do serious things. But that's changed over the last few years. There's been an increase in the quality of these bilateral exercises.
They're not like a U.S.-Japanese or U.K. naval exercise. They're not that high quality. But they are, however, a lot better than they used to be, and they certainly pose a threat to countries in the region, particularly Japan in this case, and to a lesser degree, the United States by showing that the two countries are working so closely together.
The other signal they are sending with these exercises is that they’re intentionally going to create challenges for the U.S. If we're fighting over Taiwan in some kind of cross-strait invasion, North Korea or Russia could be doing something in our backyard. I think both of those are likely scenarios. So, this exercise is a precursor to those kinds of actions. It's worth studying, but I wouldn't get too wrapped around it.
The Cipher Brief: Do you have any unanswered questions from this visit?
RADM Montgomery: I'm always impressed with Taiwan. They're a beleaguered democracy like Ukraine, like South Korea, like Israel, where authoritarian states face them down. Like Ukraine, I think Taiwan faces four adversaries. China is very clearly number one in this case. But I think it's important that these groups work together.
So, one of the things I'm looking forward to is how do we get Ukraine and Taiwan and Israel, with U.S. support and oversight, to work together to transfer the intellectual property that particularly Ukraine is learning — the adaptive warfare techniques they're learning with the drone production capacity that Taiwan could have, and maybe some Israeli skill sets as well. And U.S. companies can provide oversight and the ability to sell that to anyone in the world, because neither Taiwan nor Ukraine or even Israel is really in a position to sell to anyone in the world. There are particular limitations on Taiwan. So that's the kind of thing I’m focused on; looking for how we work these things together so that in defense tech, these beleaguered democracies are working together and sharing information.
Opinions expressed are those of the interviewee and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.
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