Taiwan’s National Security Bureau says China has stepped up cyberattacks and disinformation against the island ahead of local elections on November 28, and that Chinese attackers are now using artificial intelligence — including AI agents that scan government websites for vulnerabilities. The bureau’s report, submitted to parliament on October 20, was reported by AFP and Reuters on October 21.
Taiwan was hit by an average of 2.6 million cyberattacks a day in the first nine months of 2026, and the bureau said the attacks have intensified since June. The figures are the bureau’s own, presented to lawmakers as part of its account of Chinese grey-zone operations against the island.
What The National Security Bureau Report Says
According to AFP’s account of the report, China’s “cyber army” targeted Taiwan’s academic and research sectors, telecommunications networks and defence supply chains. The bureau said the aims were to interfere with the Taiwanese government’s defence operations, undermine international cooperation and steal sensitive technologies.
The report specifically flagged the use of AI in those operations, saying attackers use “AI agents to scan for vulnerabilities on our government websites.” That is a shift in method as much as scale: automated agents can probe large numbers of public systems continuously, looking for the weak points that human operators would then exploit.
Disinformation: 2.5 Million Items, Up About 48 Percent
Reuters, reporting the same bureau submission, focused on the information side of the campaign. The bureau said China spread more than 2.5 million pieces of disputed or false online information targeting Taiwan in the first nine months of 2026, up about 48 percent from more than 1.69 million items in the same period a year earlier, AFP put the comparison at around 1.7 million items, mainly distributed on Facebook and Threads.
The content focused on energy, food security and defence policy, as well as the platforms and images of specific candidates, ahead of the November elections for city mayors and county magistrates. The bureau said Beijing often creates narratives through official media outlets before amplifying them through online troll armies and public relations firms, using content farms, AI-generated videos, fake accounts and coordinated comment flooding. “China has expanded the use of AI technology to manipulate information, seeking to influence voter support and election results,” the report said, in Reuters’ translation.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, Reuters reported. Beijing, which claims Taiwan as its own territory, has previously denied interfering in Taiwanese elections or spreading disinformation.
Why It Matters
The bureau’s report matters because it describes AI moving from a supporting tool to an operating layer in state cyber and influence campaigns — agents scanning government systems on one side, generated video and coordinated accounts flooding voters on the other. It sits in the same pattern this site has tracked in the Artex AI tool used in cyberattacks on Japanese companies, in the US Army Cyber Command’s ECHOTRIBBLE programme for self-spreading agents and in the lone hacker who used AI agents to break into more than 100 company websites. For defenders in Taiwan and elsewhere, the claim that attacks average 2.6 million a day is an argument that manual monitoring alone cannot keep pace with automated probing.
Background
Taiwan has long accused China of grey-zone pressure that combines military drills, cyberattacks and information operations, and its security agencies publish regular accounts of that activity to parliament. The November 28 vote for city and county officials is the island’s next electoral test, and the bureau’s submission follows a familiar pattern of warnings intensifying before a ballot — this year with an explicit claim that AI agents and AI-generated content are now part of the toolkit on both the intrusion and the influence side.
Source: AFP via Malay Mail, Reuters
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