Lawfare Daily: ‘Big Tech in Taiwan’ with Sam Bresnick

[Intro]

Sam Bresnick: So this is an area to really watch over the next few years because if there's a contingency, you know, China could hold Taiwanese companies that are producing in China at risk. A conflict could potentially imperil production of electronics on Taiwan.

Justin Sherman: It's the Lawfare Podcast. I'm Justin Sherman, contributing editor at Lawfare and CEO of Global Cyber Strategies with Sam Bresnick, research fellow and Andrew W. Marshall Fellow at Georgetown's Center for Security and Emerging Technology, and author of the new report, “Big Tech in Taiwan: Beyond Semiconductors.”

Sam Bresnick: What you can't do very quickly is reconstitute huge complex supply chains that span many countries that are deeply embedded in a place like China and where there are, you know, in Taiwan, where there's a huge amount of expertise in, in electronics manufacturing.

Justin Sherman: Today we're talking about U.S. big tech firms, their investment supply chain and other engagements in and exposures to Taiwan and the future risks in the event of a conflict with China.

[Main Podcast]

I know you've been on this show before. For those who haven't listened or are less familiar with your work, why don't you start by telling us about yourself and your current research?

Sam Bresnick: Great. So I'm a research fellow at the Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University, been here for about two and a half years. I have a background in China studies. Most of my work at CSET concentrates on how the Chinese government, the Chinese military, is thinking about the national security applications of artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies.

So I look at a lot of Chinese academic literature, look at other data sources to get a sense of how China is trying to develop and deploy AI enabled systems. But I also have a prong of research that has to do with the role of big technology companies in conflict, which this report is part of.

Justin Sherman: This report you referenced, as we heard in the opening, is out from CSET at Georgetown titled “Big Tech in Taiwan: Beyond Semiconductors,” and it looks at what you just alluded to, how 17 leading U.S. tech companies are both economically and operationally entangled with Taiwan.

So before we get into the report itself, frame this for us a little bit and, and I'm talking here at the 30,000 foot, you know, geopolitical level. What motivated this paper and what concerns do you have vis-a-vis Taiwan and U.S. big tech companies?

Sam Bresnick: We're at a very interesting moment where technology companies are playing an increasingly important role in modern conflicts.

And so this paper was really motivated by observing how U.S. technology companies supported the Ukrainian government and military at the outset of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022. Many of these companies provided capabilities that even the U.S. military could not provide. I'm talking, you know, Starlink satellite internet, Palantir helping with targeting. And other companies like Maxar and Capella Space providing satellite imagery to track the Russian military buildup and then troop movements. And then other companies like Amazon and Microsoft that were involved in various kinds of cyber defense.

So this paper was really motivated by an interest in trying to figure out whether these same technology companies that supported Ukraine against Russia could actually support Taiwan against China. And we'll get into this, but essentially the, the big takeaway is that it is going to be much more difficult for a variety of reasons for U.S. technology companies to support Taiwan than it was for them to support Ukraine.

Justin Sherman: Let's start with those companies. You just gave a little bit of context on how you've selected them. What are those 17 companies, first of all? And then, and then if you want to give any more color on that process of identifying which ones to look at in this study.

Sam Bresnick: So there's a range of companies. We identified them by looking at reporting on which companies provided aid to Ukraine toward the outset of the of the war.

There's a range of companies, right. There, there are big technology companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, apple. There are other software companies that are not normally thought of as big tech, ala Cisco and Oracle. And then there are a bunch of defense tech players, whether that's Palantir or you know, companies like Capella Space, Maxar, these satellite imagery companies, and then other ones like Fortem Technology.

So there, there are a bunch of companies that basically toward the outset of the war provided aid largely pro bono to the Ukrainian government that really helped Ukraine repel the, the early Russian invasion and maintain some government functions toward the outset of the war. And I would say several of these companies have continued to support Ukraine. But you know, the, the reporting on, on their activities has diminished as the war has, has dragged on here.

Justin Sherman: Before you did this paper, and again, we're gonna turn more to this in a second focused on Taiwan exposure. You looked at a similar set of companies and China exposure in a study published last year called “Which Ties Will Bind? Big Tech Lessons from Ukraine and Implications for Taiwan.” So, so what did that study cover and sort of as context, what were the findings on those companies exposure to China?

Sam Bresnick: That study was the, the first half of the big study that includes this relatively new Taiwan paper.

In that paper, we identified these companies that provided Ukraine with support. We looked at their pre-invasion footprints in Russia. We looked at their pre-invasion footprints in Ukraine. And then we looked at their footprints as of 2022, 2023, 2024, early 2024 their footprints in China. And we were trying to get a sense of what are the factors that seemed to be playing a role in corporate decision making regarding getting involved in conflicts.

And what we did was we looked at a range of variables. We looked at supply chains, we looked at revenue, we looked at research and development, cloud computing, employees in different countries. And what we found essentially in that paper, Justin, was that these companies largely did not rely on Russia at all for any of their business functions.

Russia was not a player in supply chains. They didn't make a lot of money in Russia. Russia was not an R&D player at all. And even though they did not have a big footprint in Ukraine, most of these companies decided to get involved essentially because the costs of doing so weren't very high. They didn't lose a lot of business. There was a broad support for Ukraine against Russia. They thought this was, you know, it was politically easy for them to support Ukraine. And also I think to some degree there was a, a desire to exploit a, a business opportunity.

But what we found in this paper, of course, is that the story for China is not nearly as simple because a lot of these companies, we focused on eight in that paper, had really deep ties to China. And that was across this range of variables. So for example, when we wrote that piece, apple and Tesla were making about 20% of their revenue in China. Apple and Tesla, again, especially had deep supply chains in the, in the country. Amazon and Microsoft were doing significant AI and software research in China. And several of them had had a lot of employees there as well.

And so what we essentially found was that the decision to support Taiwan in a potential, you know, hypothetical contingency was gonna be much more difficult because these companies would expose themselves to Chinese coercion, Chinese retaliation. And so this paper that we're gonna discuss more in depth is trying to, you know, round out the picture of what these companies are dealing with in China, Taiwan, potential future contingencies.

Justin Sherman: It's a really important point and I, and again, I encourage folks to, we'll link both of these papers, but I encourage folks to check it out 'cause I, I appreciate as you're saying, the degree to which you and your co-authors flesh out that that detail. It is sort of interesting, right?  Of course there are parallels in some ways with, you know, Ukraine or Taiwan kind of scenarios. At the same time, it's apples and oranges, these two, these two tech sectors.

So, so, so turning now to this new recently published paper on Taiwan. You look at the companies you referenced across several different areas, data on greenfield foreign direct investment, research and development centers, data centers, supply chains, revenue, and job postings. So if we take some of these in turn, which companies had particularly high FDI expenditures in Taiwan and how high is high, if you have some of the numbers just, just for context? And which companies had the lowest FDI expenditures and similarly, what were those lower range numbers?

Sam Bresnick: Many of the companies that we focused on or that we covered in this report do not have any publicly identifiable, greenfield foreign direct investment into Taiwan. Now, that is partially, you know, by design. I I, I'll make this point now so I don't have to repeat it every time. But this report deals with mostly nine companies. The other eight, we basically did not find any evidence that they had operations business ties with Taiwan at all.

And I will say some of that you know, is by design. Like in the other paper, many of the companies also did not have have any footprint in China. And this is because, especially for the defense tech companies, they want to have a lot of maneuverability in their decision making regarding a a China/Taiwan conflict.

So the, the majority of the companies that we focused on are bigger companies, right, in, in this Taiwan paper. The majority of the analysis looks at Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple 'cause those are the four with the biggest footprints by, by this range of variables in Taiwan.

Turning to your FDI question. Google was the company with the highest degree of FDI. They had about $1.4 billion of FDI in Taiwan. It might sound like a lot. It's also probably an overestimate because the data source we were using captured announced FDI into two data center projects that appear not to be running. So even if you look at the high end of 1.4 billion or so, Google has made over a hundred billion dollars globally in FDI. And so that works out to, you know, a little over 1% of, of Google's total.

The other companies, Apple was around 400 million, and then Amazon and Microsoft were in the mid 200, upper 200 million. So for all of these companies, FDI is not going to be, I don't think a big factor in their calculations because they, they already are worth so much money and most of their foreign direct investment has gone elsewhere.

Justin Sherman: How did the companies rank in terms of their R&D centers and their data centers, and given the range of companies you cover, Apple, Cisco, Maxar, so on, what did these R&D centers, if we know, as well as data centers actually do in practice? You know, ie, how critical would it be if they were potentially at some future point disrupted?

Sam Bresnick: It can be kind of difficult to discern just how important individual R&D centers are to each of these companies. But of course, their existence in certain countries or territories connotes a company's belief that it can benefit from conducting R&D in that place, right?

So it appears as though Taiwan has become an important hardware research and development base for companies like Apple and Google. One Google executive is on the record sharing that the island has become the company's second most important hardware research and development base outside the United States. And Apple also has partnered with, with many Taiwanese companies, including TSMC, right, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company to develop technology for advanced displays on the island.

Taiwan is of course a, a hardware R&D power player because it plays a, a big role in electronic supply chains, not only in Asia, but, but global electronic supply chains. And it is the leader in, you know, advanced semiconductor production. So it makes sense that companies that are involved in the production of hardware, right, I mentioned Apple and Google, but it stands reason that Microsoft also has a, a, a big interest here as well. So, you know, it, it makes sense that R&D on the hardware side would be happening in Taiwan.

One of the companies, Microsoft in particular, also seems to have some AI research activity on the island, but that appears to be somewhat less important than the the hardware side. But of course it stands to reason that hardware R&D processes could be disrupted due to a Taiwan contingency, at least in the short term, which could cause these companies, some, some issues.

Moving to data centers. I think this is a really interesting area. Google stands out as having had the, the longest data center presence in Taiwan. It opened a, a data center in Changhua County in 2013, and just over the last few months, Microsoft and Amazon have opened their own data centers and Apple is reportedly building one. These reveal that at least in part, Taiwan is becoming an increasingly important player in software and AI, right?

These companies are building data centers all over the place. So I don't think these constitute a, a big vulnerability for these companies, right? Amazon has over 250 global data centers. Microsoft has around 80. Google has fewer, but still a lot. So even though these, these companies are building data centers in Taiwan, you know, it's unlikely that they will be, that they will form like a significant decision block for, for these companies.

Justin Sherman: And how do you assess, with these taken together and then some of the other data points you examined in the study, how do you assess the 17 companies supply chain, or suppose the subset that you say have, have a presence there, how do you assess their exposure in the supply chain at large to Taiwan?

Sam Bresnick: This seems to be the, the most important piece of exposure to, you know, a, a Taiwan/China contingency. Apple in its 2023 supplier information, which is the most recent one, it has about 25% of its suppliers, or it reports that around 25% of its suppliers are producing goods for Apple in Taiwan. And then around a third of Microsoft's top 100 suppliers from its most recent list are either headquartered in Taiwan or are subsidiaries of, of Taiwan headquartered companies.

Amazon has a little bit less of a of a, of an exposure. Amazon tends to have more suppliers because it is involved in all kinds of production, right? It's not only electronics. All of the Amazon branded goods are in its supply chain, and so Taiwan is not some not a country that makes, you know, sort of, tables or clothes or things that you might buy on Amazon.

But that said, you know, the, the, the supply chain story is extremely important and links to the, the China paper very closely because between China and Taiwan, you know, these two places are really the, the heart in a lot of ways of the global electronic supply chain. And so even if there is some kind of de-risking that goes on, right, which is ongoing on some level, it's gonna be very difficult to completely remove the risk to these companies for, from a, a Taiwan/China contingency because these companies from, from both China and Taiwan play such an important role in electronics manufacturing.

So this is an area to really watch over the next few years because if there's a contingency, you know, China could hold Taiwanese companies that are producing in China at risk. A conflict could potentially imperil production of electronics on Taiwan. And so, you know, supply chains seem to be, they're gonna be a really important part of company's decision calculus in a future potential conflict.

Justin Sherman: Obviously plenty of listeners are, are following what you're saying, but can you just briefly, when you say de-risking, give us a little more context on, on what you're referring to there, vis-a-vis these tech supply chains.

Sam Bresnick: So the U.S. government, and a lot of these companies, given the increasing geopolitical risks surrounding Taiwan, are working to move supply chains really mostly from China to other parts of the world, particularly South Asia and Southeast Asia. Vietnam has become a real electronics manufacturing hotspot, and India now is, is making a, a very, you know, considerably large portion of iPhones at this point, especially for the U.S. market.

And so the idea behind de-risking is that if you move supply chains out of China, and also possibly out of Taiwan, which some companies like Tesla and SpaceX are actually asking for too. If you move those supply chains to other parts of the world, you, you know, are not exposed to risk from a Taiwan/China contingency in the same way.

And I think this is partially true, but it's also more complicated than that because even if you move the factory that actually assembles the iPhones to India, let's say, from China a vast portion of the, the parts that go into. An iPhone are still gonna be made in China, and that's true for the foreseeable future. So de-risking isn't just as easy as, you know, plopping a new factory outside of China or Taiwan, it's gonna take years and investments in order to, actually move the supply ecosystems into these other places.

So de-risking is definitely important, but it's not gonna be, you know, accomplished for several years if really ever. But these companies are working to de-risk, quote unquote, their supply chains in the, you know, near term.

Justin Sherman: Thank you for that. And I want to come back to, to several of the things you just mentioned later.

One of the other many interesting details to potentially pull out of this study, something that that certainly remains very top of mind in my own case, given Russian coercion of U.S. tech company personnel on the ground are the labor force footprints that you chart in Taiwan for these American firms. Which of the companies had had or have, I suppose, the biggest labor footprints in Taiwan, which have the smallest? And do we know if these are mostly personnel that they've hired from within Taiwan or these folks brought in from elsewhere in the world and so on?

Sam Bresnick: So it's very hard to get really granular data on workforce in, in Taiwan or really in, in a lot of countries. That said, we used job postings as a proxy and then also did a lot of research on, you know, whether various executives had shared details.

And so both by job postings and, you know, through, through open-source research, it seems that Google has the, the biggest Taiwan-based workforce of any of these companies. One of their executives shared that they now have thousands of employees from over 30 countries in Taiwan. You know, Google is an interesting case because it had a, a, a few scandals in its China business or related to its China business several years ago.

And made the decision to, you know, wind down several projects there. It, it had an AI research lab that it closed. It was working on a, a, a search engine designed for the Chinese market for which they got a lot of flack and it seems that they have, you know, still some business in China, but they have made Taiwan its sort of greater China hub.

But many companies do not seem to have any employees there at all. And then several of the other, you know, sort of big tech companies have seem to have a, a, a range, right? A lot of the people working for these companies, there, there seems to be a, a split between the technical staff, right, given the, the hardware chops of Taiwan, the semiconductor industry there. There're a bunch of hardware engineers that they were advertising for, but then also, you know, companies like Tesla need technicians to repair vehicles there. And then, you know, Apple has a couple stores there and, and would need retail, retail representatives there. So there's a split between the more technical staff and the, the sort of more retail or service-oriented group.

Justin Sherman: Stepping back a little bit now, looking across these risk areas, FDI, R&D centers, supply chains, et cetera, what national security or geopolitical risks stand out the most to you?

And I'm curious how you weight your own findings. Are there particular factors–you've mentioned this a little bit, but are there particular factors such as supply chains or R&D centers that open up a U.S. tech firm to more exposure or coercive pressure compared to other factors you're looked at?

Sam Bresnick: Definitely. And you, you mentioned it a little bit in that question, supply chains seem to be the number one pain point for these companies. And why do I say that? A lot of these companies make very little money in Taiwan compared to their global sales.

If they lose a data center or, or you know, their revenue in Taiwan, that is not an existential risk for these companies. If they lose their R&D centers, that is probably an issue, but more in the short term, right? Because you know, you can reconstitute research labs somewhat quickly. But what you can't do very quickly is reconstitute huge complex supply chains that span many countries that are deeply embedded in a place like China and where there are, you know, in Taiwan, where there's a huge amount of expertise in, in electronics manufacturing.

And so, you know, should there be a, a contingency and should these companies feel like they should they get involved here and support Taiwan even if they believe that's the right thing to do, China could hold at risk their entire manufacturing operation, or huge chunks I should say, of their manufacturing operations, which would make it very difficult for them to, you know, continue to build and sell their products. You know, which, which would, which would dwarf their losses of revenue in, in China and Taiwan.

The other big issue, Justin, that this report does not really get at, but is clearly a huge issue, is the advanced semiconductors from Taiwan. Right? The subtitle of the report is “Beyond Semiconductors.” It's clear that losing access to advanced Taiwanese semiconductors would be a huge issue for several of these companies. But this report really doesn't focus on that because there is so much analysis of the, the semiconductor choke point on Taiwan.

But in general, supply chains are a huge issue, much more so than cloud computing infrastructure, revenue, workforce. It seems to dwarf these other issues for these companies.

Justin Sherman: You note that in some cases and in some areas, some firms are actually expanding their entanglements with Taiwan, which you write might make good business sense, but comes with, as we're talking about a multitude of risks, be they technological or economic or geopolitical and so on.

What are some of the reasons U.S. tech firms keep expanding their Taiwan footprints even in the current moment? And what is your sense of how different companies, just at a general level might be weighing these factors? Are they perceiving that the economic benefits are just greater than the security risks? Is it a, a sort of naivete or a lack of recognition of the geopolitical issues or, or perhaps other reasons?

Sam Bresnick: We have to some degree entered a new geopolitical era here where geopolitics may, in some ways condition corporate decisions, but I don't think we're fully in that era yet.

We just saw right, with the reversal of the Nvidia H20 AI chip ban, which you know, was, was clearly a win for players in Silicon Valley, Wall Street, but rankled a lot of national security experts that there's still this, this conflict between the, the national security community and the business community. And over the last few years with export controls, right, it seems like, or it has seemed like the national security concerns were winning out to some degree. But I think this is largely an unsettled arena of conflict.

And I would say, you know, these companies as of now are making decisions. It, there might be a degree of naivete, but I do think if you're sitting in, you know, the headquarters of these, these big technology companies. You're thinking Taiwan, you know, is, is a, is a somewhat large developed economy. It's very technologically savvy. It's got a thriving digital economy. It's a leading electronics manufacturer and semiconductor producer. It's got a very tech savvy workforce.

And I think these companies know that right outside of supply chains, which have been entangled with Taiwan and Taiwanese companies in China for quite a long time, the risks of marginally expanding their operations on the island do  not constitute existential considerations, right? These are not existential risks for them and could lead to, you know, solid profits, growth, what have you.

And of course, right, war is not imminent, right? We don't know for sure that there's gonna be a conflict over Taiwan. And so given the fact that these companies think they can make money there, it's, it's an attractive place to do business. You know, it just sort of makes business sense for them to do, given the fact that the risks are not existential.

Justin Sherman: That makes sense. And it's again, I think underscoring what we were getting at earlier in terms of there are parallels, right with U.S. tech exposure to the Russian market, yet it's, it's really also a totally different animal.

Zooming out and as someone who not only wrote this report but studies this issue broadly, do you think there are parallels between how tech firms responded to Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine and how they might respond to a Chinese invasion of, of Taiwan? I mean, we've been talking about this, but just to ask it explicitly and, and if so, how strong are those parallels? Or if there are not good parallels, perhaps, you know, how might you think U.S. tech firms respond in this different scenario?

Sam Bresnick: I'll give you a couple different things to think about with my answer. The first thing is, I think there is a parallel in that really for the first time with the Ukraine/Russia war, did we see technology companies that are focused on the civilian market globally, for the first time did we see them actually taking part and taking a strong position in a modern conflict.

And I think this is important because if you look at the 2010s or so in Silicon Valley, there was a lot of unease with being–among employees at these companies and I think with executives too–there was a lot of unease with their being pulled into, you know, the Washington D.C. national security space.

And so, I think the Russia, Ukraine situation shows that these companies are now more willing to be national security actors, and they're very aware that in our sort of dual use age where cyber technologies, communications technologies have real military utility, these companies seem to be willing to play ball in a way that they might not have been, you know, 10 or 15 years ago.

That said, I think these two papers on China and Taiwan show that the decision calculus for a lot of these companies is going to be much, much more difficult regarding a future Taiwan contingency, just because their businesses are so entangled in this part of the world, especially in the supply chain area that to support Taiwan could open them up to coercion and, you know, the potential loss of their ability to make products in a way that would be, you know, would make it much more difficult to throw their weight behind Taiwan, even if they think it is the right thing to do.

Now, we could see that shift if de-risking really picks up and they, they continue to, you know, lessen their footprints in China, right? And there's outside of supply chains, there's evidence that this is happening. Microsoft and Amazon over the last few months have notified their, or have announced, I should say, that they are shutting down AI research labs in China. So, you know, there, there is a certain degree to which de-risking is actually happening.

I would make one final point here, which is that. I think we should focus on de-risking, not decoupling 'cause decoupling connotes a, a full break with China and that to me would lower the cost of eventually going to war. And I think some ties between China and, and the States or, you know, corporate ties could be stabilizing going forward here.

Justin Sherman: Lowers the cost for China to initiate conflict, you mean, or, or?

Sam Bresnick: Lowers the cost I think for both countries, because they would have done the work to not, you know, have, have collateral damage to their, to their business ecosystems as much. So it would be easier for both, I think, to make this decision.

Justin Sherman: Right, right, yeah. As you said that these arguments are certainly out there, but, but to, to clarify, so do you expect that these or other, you know, not covered in these papers, U.S. tech firms might shift or reduce their Taiwan exposure in different ways in the next few years? And are there particular tech security risks that you see greatly increasing or changing in the next few years?

Sam Bresnick: I'm not sure. I see. The, the story really changing in the next few years. Something to watch right, is the degree to which the supply chains on Taiwan are shifting, right? I think I mentioned a little before, certain companies are requesting that their suppliers in Taiwan move production out of Taiwan, right? And when we generally think of de-risking, we think of companies moving out of China.

I would say there's also an interesting report out several months ago, maybe over a year ago now from CSIS that polled Taiwanese companies to get a sense of how they were approaching, you know, the U.S./China conflict and their own, you know potential business exposure from a, a conflict over the island. And interestingly, several Taiwanese companies stated that they were looking to relocate at least some production, at least some of their business outside the island.

So, you know, there could be this interesting story happening where we're already starting to see parts of this with the data centers being set up by, you know, Microsoft and Amazon and Apple potentially, you know, working on a data center in Taiwan as well. We could see an expansion of the, of the digital businesses, so to speak in Taiwan, while we see supply chain shifts outside of the island into sort of more Southeast Asia and India.

But I think the idea that technology companies are going to preemptively, you know, sever themselves from Taiwan, I just don't really see that happening in the next couple years, at least.

Justin Sherman: Lastly, and again for listeners, your report is titled “Big Tech in Taiwan: Beyond Semiconductors.” You talk about how these overall touchpoints may shape company decisions, you just got at this a little bit, but taking it from the other view, the public sector side, if you were advising the U.S. government, let's say the White House or any of the numerous executive agencies on this subject, are there any recommendations you might make for them to better track or identify or potentially mitigate some of these risks to us technology in the near future?

Sam Bresnick: There are a few roles the government can play related to your question here.

First of all, there's a role for the government to play in de-risking. There's a, a, a way in which they could help companies identify opportunities in various different countries. There are ways to facilitate, you know, business to business dialogue, so to speak, between companies in, in, in different areas. You know, again, I think it would be too much for the U.S. government to demand decoupling. I think the Trump administration over the last couple weeks here has made it clear that they actually don't wanna fully decouple from China, which I think is actually largely a good thing.

But then there are other areas that we could look into. One is discussing scenarios with these companies beforehand to get a sense of what companies might be willing to do in various situations, because those kinds of conversations could inform military planning, right? The, the outset of the Russia/Ukraine War was somewhat chaotic because you had a lot of companies that wanted to jump in and could provide a lot of very useful capabilities. But there wasn't a lot of organization, especially with the U.S. government, a lot of times these companies were going directly to the Ukrainian government and saying, hey, we can do X, Y, and Z for you. How do we get involved?

And so really setting the stage here for companies to be able to be more helpful before a conflict breaks out would be, would be useful and very closely related to that is better use of government contracting, right? Contracts can create less ambiguity about the roles companies could play in a conflict and, and create, you know, or, or help align incentives amid a conflict, right?

The, the nightmare scenario for Taiwan is that, you know, in a conflict, they would rely on a technology that a company could then unilaterally decide to withdraw, right? And we saw this partially in Russia/Ukraine, right where there was reporting that Elon Musk didn't approve of a certain operation by the Ukrainians and, and withdrew Starlink access.

The Taiwanese, I will say are, are very reluctant to partner with Starlink or to depend on Starlink because of this issue. And I think there's a way in which government contracting can clarify roles and decision making structures in a way that would create more clarity for both the U.S. and Taiwanese governments in a conflict.

Justin Sherman: That's very interesting and we can do a whole separate episode I'm sure on, on the Starlink question set with Taiwan. But for now, that is all the time we have. So Sam, thanks again for joining us.

Sam Bresnick: Thanks so much for having me, Justin.

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