Taiwan wants to create an "alternative Starlink" for the sake of protection from China

The leaders of the island state were inspired to create their own analogue of Starlink by the successes of the Mask company during the military operation on the territory of Ukraine.

According to the Financial Times (FT), citing its own sources, the Taiwanese authorities want to entrust the implementation of the alternative Internet project to the TASA space agency.

"We are going to transform our low—Earth orbit satellite communications project into a company," a TASA representative told reporters.

Counting the experience of the Mask company on Being successful and quite capable of providing reliable Internet connection to consumers even "during a large-scale disaster," the Taiwanese authorities turned to representatives of the American venture fund Draper Associates for help. As Kommersant notes, this fund previously worked with SpaceX and Tesla. According to the initiators of the project, the launch of alternative satellite communications can provide Taiwan with a higher level of "social sustainability", but the practical implementation of the initiative will take several years.

In total, since the beginning of the Russian military operation on the territory of Ukraine, Musk's SpaceX company has supplied about 22 thousand Starlink terminals to the republic and plans to increase their number by another 10 thousand.

Against the background of the aggravation of relations with the People's Republic of China, the Taiwanese authorities are preparing for various scenarios. The country has already increased the service life in the army.

The Chinese authorities, who consider Taiwan their territory, are sensitive to the contacts of American officials directly with the leadership of the island state. Chinese President Xi Jinping believes that this violates the "one China" policy adopted in the country.