Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense has proposed allocating 95.93 million New Taiwan dollars ($3.03 million) in its 2027 budget to create a specialized unit to find Chinese hackers already operating inside military networks, local news reported.
The planned “military cyber hunt team” would operate under the ministry’s Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command.
According to Taipei Times, the initiative marks a shift from conventional defenses focused on blocking attacks and patching vulnerabilities after a breach to an integrated approach that combines protection with active threat hunting.
Instead of assuming military networks remain secure until an alert is triggered, the team would work on the premise that hostile actors may have already penetrated them.
Personnel would analyze large volumes of system logs and network traffic to uncover intruders and backdoors that have evaded existing defenses.
The unit would focus particularly on advanced, persistent threats.
Such operations can allow state-backed hackers to remain hidden inside sensitive networks for months or years, stealing information or preserving access that could later be used to disrupt military systems.
US-Modeled Training
Foreign instructors are expected to provide adversarial training modeled on US military exercises.
The program would teach Taiwanese personnel to track and remove hostile actors from military networks and critical infrastructure under simulated operational conditions.
Training is expected to support Taiwan’s transition toward a more proactive cyber force capable of protecting military command and communication systems while strengthening the resilience of critical civilian infrastructure during peacetime.
Shared procedures and technical standards could also improve Taiwan’s ability to coordinate cyber defense operations with the US and other partners during a conflict.
Growing Pressure on Taiwanese Networks
The proposal comes amid sustained Chinese cyber activity against the island.
Government agencies, defense organizations, telecommunications networks, transportation systems, and technology companies are among the principal targets.
Taipei has already taken part in multinational training to improve its response to coordinated attacks.
In 2024, Taiwan’s Ministry of Digital Affairs joined the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s Cyber Storm IX exercise for the first time.
The remote exercise brought together nine countries and 2,200 participants to test information sharing and decision-making during simulated attacks on critical infrastructure.