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I'm unsure of how many internet services Taiwan relies on outside of Taiwan? If the servers are on the island, my understanding is that they'll be fine. Unfortu

by abirch 2y ago

I'm unsure of how many internet services Taiwan relies on outside of Taiwan? If the servers are on the island, my understanding is that they'll be fine. Unfortunately they won't be able to access Hacker News, but they should be able to bank, buy groceries, etc.

re-thc 2y ago
> If the servers are on the island, my understanding is that they'll be fine. Taiwan doesn't have a huge data center capacity. A lot of services are in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Singapore, etc... Of the big clouds e.g. AWS is only opening a data center later this year. It's also not so simple. Even local servers / services might have all sorts of "needs" to phone "home" elsewhere e.g. for analytics. A lot of software might not have been tested and will crash. Even the big clouds might not work in isolation. Then there's also things like patches, updates, firmwares etc. A lot of things like kubernetes clusters may be set to auto update and crash. If you need a docker image the local CDN didn't cache then it is gone.
- lurk2 2y ago
  Why would this have any strategic impact on Taiwan's capacity to defend itself?
  - re-thc 2y ago
    Defending isn't just about outside forces. There are internal 1s too. There have been plenty of polls / surveys and it isn't united. Lots of people living there were originally from China or have some relationship to it. Ukraine put up a mostly unified front and managed to do so for so long. Not every place can or will. Despite what the US media keeps making of it, China isn't all evil nor does >50% of Taiwan think this way.
- borsecplata 2y ago
  I'm quite certain taiwan is aware of this "kubernetes clusters" paradox and the military has the issue addressed.
- heylook 2y ago
  You seem to believe that military networks are slapped together with off-the-shelf SaaS apps, or that military software contracts don't specify that all that "e.g. for analytics" crap has to be pulled out of the build, or that they don't test these things regularly. Have you ever worked on a military contract? Or even just a regular government contract? It's a whole other type of sales, contracting, and fulfillment process.
  - re-thc 2y ago
    > Have you ever worked on a military contract? Or even just a regular government contract? Yes > You seem to believe that military networks are slapped together with off-the-shelf SaaS apps You seem to believe I was talking specifically about the military. Taiwan isn't Ukraine. China has infiltrated the every day lives etc over the years. It's not unified. The chaos just from the everyday citizens, protests, etc might cause enough trouble for the military / government. Those aren't "air-gapped".

by abirch 2y ago

re-thc 2y ago

> If the servers are on the island, my understanding is that they'll be fine. Taiwan doesn't have a huge data center capacity. A lot of services are in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Singapore, etc... Of the big clouds e.g. AWS is only opening a data center later this year. It's also not so simple. Even local servers / services might have all sorts of "needs" to phone "home" elsewhere e.g. for analytics. A lot of software might not have been tested and will crash. Even the big clouds might not work in isolation. Then there's also things like patches, updates, firmwares etc. A lot of things like kubernetes clusters may be set to auto update and crash. If you need a docker image the local CDN didn't cache then it is gone.

lurk2 2y ago
Why would this have any strategic impact on Taiwan's capacity to defend itself?
- re-thc 2y ago
  Defending isn't just about outside forces. There are internal 1s too. There have been plenty of polls / surveys and it isn't united. Lots of people living there were originally from China or have some relationship to it. Ukraine put up a mostly unified front and managed to do so for so long. Not every place can or will. Despite what the US media keeps making of it, China isn't all evil nor does >50% of Taiwan think this way.
borsecplata 2y ago
I'm quite certain taiwan is aware of this "kubernetes clusters" paradox and the military has the issue addressed.
heylook 2y ago
You seem to believe that military networks are slapped together with off-the-shelf SaaS apps, or that military software contracts don't specify that all that "e.g. for analytics" crap has to be pulled out of the build, or that they don't test these things regularly. Have you ever worked on a military contract? Or even just a regular government contract? It's a whole other type of sales, contracting, and fulfillment process.
- re-thc 2y ago
  > Have you ever worked on a military contract? Or even just a regular government contract? Yes > You seem to believe that military networks are slapped together with off-the-shelf SaaS apps You seem to believe I was talking specifically about the military. Taiwan isn't Ukraine. China has infiltrated the every day lives etc over the years. It's not unified. The chaos just from the everyday citizens, protests, etc might cause enough trouble for the military / government. Those aren't "air-gapped".