Taiwan gingerly tests how it would cope if China choked its internet
The democratically run island is testing, for the first time on a mass scale, how it might cope if a Chinese attack disrupted its communications.
A diner eats by the light of their phone during an air defense drill where most of the shops went dark for 30 minutes at the LaLaport mall in Taichung, Taiwan, on Monday. | Lam Yik Fei / The New York Times
Aug 11, 2026
TAICHUNG, Taiwan – For half an hour Monday, mobile data was throttled across central Taiwan, leaving millions of people unable to stream videos, share photos or make video calls on their cellphones.
The interruption was deliberate: Taiwan was testing, for the first time on a mass scale, how the island might cope if a Chinese attack disrupted its communications.
The activity was part of Taiwan’s annual civil defense exercise, when the government tries to give citizens a sense, albeit a fleeting one, of how they should respond if China tried to seize the self-governed island by force.
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