Dear Minister, you mentioned that this visit to Lithuania is your first foreign visit since August of 20…

Yes, since I became the Minister of Digital Affairs.

Yes, since August, last August, when Ministry of Digital Affairs, moda, was opened in Taiwan.

Exactly.

Why did you choose Lithuania for your first foreign visit?

Because we share very close values. The moda, my Ministry, is founded upon the idea of “digital resilience for all” — we work in the frontline against authoritarian expansionism.

We rely on the solidarity between the digital democracies, to work together to enhance not just cybersecurity, but also innovation, like fintech.

Undoubtedly, Lithuania, value-wise, is the closest to Taiwan in the world. As we both have broadband like tap water. It doesn’t matter, the physical distance, but it does matter, the distance in values.

Who initiated your visit to Lithuania? It was initiated by your authority or you were invited by Lithuanian politicians?

It was on a video podcast called “Innovative Minds” on TaiwanPlus. I interviewed Minister Ausrine Armonaite on the video podcast. We talked about laser, about space, about digital innovation. We thought that it would be really good to meet face to face to explore some of the common topics. It was improvised during the podcast interview.

Who of yours made a first step? Minister of Lithuania or you, about the initiative to…?

I would say it’s a brainstorming session. Just like when I arrived here, we were talking about a letter of intent that we’re signing to improve the digital resilience of school children here.

Then I asked, “Do you have something like our Citizen Digital Certificate?” that’s the Taiwanese e-card, and she was like, “Yes, we do.” I’m like, “OK, so do I apply and collect in Taipei, it’s possible?” because there’s a Taipei office there. She’s like, “Let’s figure something out,” and then presto! The next day I was in the immigration and collected the card, along with my senior secretary.

I would say that it’s truly a joint brainstorming session. The idea seems good, and we work together.

Who initiated – I want to repeat question – you or Ausrine Armonaite, your visit in Lithuania, or it was brainstorming?

Yeah, it was a brainstorming. We worked on the details together. The idea came to us simultaneously during the video podcast.

Yes, I understood, during the video podcast, the whole thing was initiated.

Both Lithuanian politicians and business representatives, the biggest opportunities and greatest potential in cooperation with Taiwan, see in the area of high technology – semiconductors, laser, ICT, biotechnology sectors. I would like to ask you, where and in which areas, the greatest potential in cooperation with Lithuania is seen by Taiwanese institutions and businesses?

As I’m the Minister of Digital Affairs, I’m going to say that Lithuania is the perfect gateway for the Taiwanese people to make business with the European Union single market. Conversely, we think Taiwan is the best gateway for the Lithuanian businesses to make new contacts, to make new markets around the Indo-Pacific.

The reason is that, as I said, we’re both very digitally capable. The workflows are very streamlined. We’ve got a very liberal and also safe political environment on both sides. I think this is the greatest potential.

Now, the areas you mentioned builds upon this mutual trust. I’m informed by our representative here that next week, five days from now, there will be a very large joint announcement event on some of those areas, but I cannot reveal the details now.

You mentioned that Lithuania could be a gateway for Taiwanese business. Could you specify, for what businesses, for what sectors does Taiwan have any priorities in cooperation with Lithuania?

Sure. For example, just one example, we visited the GovTech Lab in the Innovation Agency. We learned that we already work together. Not consciously, separately, on helping some developing nations or developed nations that need reconstruction, now or shortly after they win the war, together.

On these construction and reconstruction projects, Lithuania is a world-trusted partner by everyone. Not just in Europe, but around the world, because you yourself have done very successful digital transformation in a very short span of years, the same as Taiwan.

I would say, anything that involves digital infrastructure, digital public construction, which includes, of course, education sector and tech – civic tech, fintech – these are the joint projects that can be done from afar.

We are not constrained by face to face in working together because we have very good broadband via video-podcasting-enabling broadband technologies.

You mentioned about the events which will be next week. A high-tech group Teltonika next week will sign an agreement with the advanced Industrial Technology Research Institute…

Yeah, the ITRI.

…ITRI, on the transfer to semiconductor chip technology. As I know, it will be the first time when Taiwan will share its semiconductor technology with foreign company. Why Taiwan has decided to transfer its semiconductor technology to Lithuania? What are Taiwanese expectations in this cooperation with Teltonika?

You will get the answer next week. From my point of view, when we talk about sharing the know-how of making chips with people here during our forums, Parliamentary visits, and so on, it’s very clear that, in Taiwan, we see technology not as neutral, but rather as embedding our democratic beliefs, and the same here.

For example, we talked about the European Union GDPR. Now, even in Europe, there’s certain entrepreneurs that think GDPR as some extra cost, extra burden to do. However, the entrepreneurs that I meet here see something that distinguishes yourself because you want to design with privacy and respect of civil liberties and human right in mind.

In Taiwan too, we are investing into the chips that makes it easier to keep the privacy of encrypted data, and then compute over non-personal data for the public good, called data altruism, a European idea. Again, we see our chip makers as allies in protecting, safeguarding personal liberties, freedoms, and these very important human right values.

Only with the allies sharing, very closely, the same values would we consider enabling our friends, our allies to shape the chip-making toward our common values. We would not do that with authoritarian expansionists.

What are your demand expectations in cooperation with Teltonika? I would like to repeat my question. Do you have specific…

I’ll repeat my answer, which is that it’ll be answered in detail next week.

OK. Not only Teltonika, but also two other companies that will be announced next week. I know we have to sign an agreement for joint projects with Taiwan and start partnerships with your country. Could you provide or reveal more details about these projects?

The person who can provide more details is sitting right here… our ambassador.

As the minister of digital affairs, my visit is concentrated on the digital delivery of services, on e-government, and digital transformation. Because the specific question you asked is not, strictly speaking, about digital transformation, I would encourage you to seek out our representative, which is pretty close nearby, to answer your questions.

I want to ask you because I think you know details. Maybe could you share the details about these agreements?

I know all the details about the letter of intent we signed with the Innovation Agency, but truth to be told, I do not know the details of the agreements that you refer to here, because they are within the purviews of the other ministries in the cabinet. I’ve been briefed, as an overview, the outline of it, but it seems that you have exactly the same outline as I do have.

Could you specify if you know how partnerships between Taiwan and these two companies will be implemented?

Only in very broad terms, and you already described it.

Will Taiwan make any investments in these projects?

As you shared, I think the investment of funding, of loans and investment is one, but as I describe here, our investment here is about making it easier to conduct business. Instead of signing papers and FedEx-ing those papers, we should be doing e-signatures, and so on, making the services easier, lowering the transaction costs, increasing the mutual trust, this is my purview.

What is the content that is signed on those electronic signatures, that is not my purview. It is better to ask the representative.

You couldn’t reveal, but you know the details?

I couldn’t reveal if I know the details. Also, if you are after specific funding amounts, I honestly don’t know.

Maybe you know, will this project be funded by funds established by Taiwanese? I have in mind Taiwania Capital or Taiwan Eximbank?

Of course, we’ve met with the personnel that you mentioned here, the Eximbank, they’re part of the Representative Office. We mostly talked about expediting their work flows, making sure that they can, for example, interoperability between those electronic signatures. We did not explore in detail the kind of investment that you mentioned, especially the specifics like the funding amount.

Improvement of bilateral relations between Taiwan and Lithuania, and deeper economic ties have raised many expectations for Lithuanian businesses and politicians about Taiwanese investors. Can we expect a bigger investment breakthrough from Taiwan in the nearest future?

Next week. It’s very short time in future.

Next week?

Yes.

Later, after that?

What comes after next week will also be hinted at next week, from what I understood. Again, I don’t have the kind of details that you seek.

You don’t have, you don’t know, or you don’t want to say it?

I don’t know. I talked about, as I mentioned, the processes, improvements, making future joint investments easier, and also joint ventures to help…like the Taiwan-Lithuanian joint help to Ukraine or other places that needs public constructions.

That’s the topic that I explored with my counterpart and also with Representative Office here. We did not explore in detail the specific investment deals that you were referring to.

I don’t ask about specific investments, I ask about all investments which Lithuania could expect from Taiwan in the nearest future.

You asked whether there’s willingness for more. From what I’ve been briefed, that will be talked about, that will be announced next week.

Maybe could you specify which sectors in Lithuania could expect Taiwanese investments in the nearest future, and what amount of investments could we expect?

That will also be revealed next week.

It would be interesting what will be after next week.

If the ambassador can reveal details now, that would be an exclusive, but I sincerely don’t know.

I want to repeat the question, you don’t know or you don’t want to say?

I don’t know the details. I know that some of these will be revealed next week, but I have not talked about those details with our Representative Office.

Let’s go to a more specific question which are related to your area.

Thank you, that’d be great.

In your interview with “Washington Post” in November, you said that, I want to quote, “Yes, the moda has service delivery, digital transformation, 5G infrastructure, and things like that. On these particular topics, of course, we are ready to cooperate with Lithuania.”

Could you specify how Lithuania and Taiwan are going to cooperate in these areas which you mentioned?

Definitely.

Do you have any specific plans?

We do, yeah, here. One example, as I mentioned, is electronic signature interoperability. We understand that we just joined the World Wide Web Consortium, the W3C, as moda, and also the FidO Alliance.

We understand that the European Union is also considering those, what we call, decentralized identifier technologies, that will make it much easier, like an electronic wallet, for all these different e-residence cards to work together in a interoperable fashion.

The endpoint would be that any electronic signature that I make on the smartphone, or with this card or with that card, ends up being automatically interoperable without extra adaptations costs by the banks and by everybody involved. That will massively lower the transaction cost between the Taiwanese companies and Lithuania. That’s one.

Another one is that we, both of our sides, care a lot about not just cybersecurity in technological terms, but also the security, the safety of navigating the Internet. Both of our jurisdictions care very strongly about press freedom and freedom of speech. We are both impacted by online harms, information manipulation, and things like that.

How to overcome these challenges, working with the largest multinational platforms, without sacrificing our civil liberties, that is the common challenge that we’re both tackling.

I’m also the chair of the National Institute of Cyber Security in Taiwan, the NICS. We are investing first and foremost with Lithuania, but potentially with other frontline digital democracies, on how to overcome these threats together. This is the second area.

The third area is about satellites. We just opened the spectrum bid for the mid- and lower-Earth orbit satellites for commercial operations in Taiwan. This year, we’re going to deploy 700 satellite receivers – some fixed, some mobile – in Taiwan, to serve as the Internet backbone, even when a large earthquake destroys our submarine cables, maybe natural or non-natural earthquake.

When we do that, we want to tap into the expertise that the Lithuanian government already have, because you have Starlink already here for quite a while now. You have worked with those public cloud vendors, on the resilience and safety and backups. You have also worked Estonia on the safety of the data stored outside of your territory.

All this is quite new to Taiwan. We want our public sector to work with your public sector, to seek out common private sector vendors and providers that can provide this kind of communication and data resilience, in a way that still respects our sovereignty and human rights.

Could you tell me more about this card? What is it?

Yes. This is my Citizen Digital Certificate, Taiwan.

It is the same as…?

Very much so. Technologically, they’re almost exactly the same. This enables me authenticate myself, to sign. It enables me to file my tax very quickly, in just a couple of minutes, with a few taps. It enables, during the pandemic, of course, to register for vaccines, for masks collections and stimulus voucher collection, and pretty much everything that can be done digitally.

As I understand, in Lithuania also, during the three years of the pandemic, people’s habits changed when it comes to digital government services.

By obtaining this card, I’m able to test myself the interoperability of our software, with the end-goal of raising the awareness to the Taiwanese community, that there is a office of Lithuania in Taipei. You don’t have to fly to Vilnius to collect this card. Then, with this card you can do what our CDC – Citizen Digital Certificate – does, not just for Lithuania public services, but through Lithuania to the EU single market.

On Tuesday, moda reported – I read the report – that one of the area in which Taiwan will seek to engage with Lithuania is cybersecurity. You also mentioned about it. Could you specify how Lithuania and Taiwan are going to cooperate in cybersecurity?

Definitely. We have some pretty good cybersecurity providers, like Trend Micro, and our unicorns like Gogolook. You have your unicorns, NordVPN. Both of us are, let’s say, battle-tested when it comes to cybersecurity. We have an international reputation of being literally in the frontline, and safeguarding the safety of our nations.

Now, in the global scene, the cybersecurity is moving towards this idea of zero-trust network architecture, or ZTNA. The idea is that we need to combine this biometric identification, the device identification, and many other factors, in order to access each and every service. We cannot rely only on passwords or any other single factor or intranet firewalls for defense.

It is a very large investment for Taiwan to digitally transform ourselves into this new zero-trust architecture.

We need all the help that we can get, both from shared code, like the software build of materials, so that we can collectively, jointly maintain similar infrastructures as the Nordic Institute, like the Iceland, Finland, and Estonia are maintain X-Road together, so we can collaborate in maintaining shared infrastructures.

Then, we can also share our best practices on how to work within the public sector to introduce the innovation from the private sector, to accelerate the adoption of better cyber-hygiene and cybersecurity practices.

In my visit to the GovTech unit with the Innovation Agency, I was very surprised that they were so agile, and so able to convince all the ministries and governments to adopt such private-sector innovations, creatively interpreting the procurement laws, as we have done so in Taiwan.

That is, again, another area that…It’s very easy to deliver services across borders, the cybersecurity protection, I mean. It’s a ripe area for our startups and our unicorns, and your startups and unicorns, to be introduced to each other.

Do you have specific plans in cooperation with Lithuania in cybersecurity area?

Yes. For example, in the letter of intent that Democracy Network, Taiwan have signed with Innovation Agency, Lithuania, we want to work together to overcome online harm by empowering our educators and the school children, to not just identify the cyber threats and counter them, but also participate actively in the fact-finding and the contextualization in learning from journalists when it comes to checking online sources and things like that.

Because in Taiwan, we know that when the civil society engage with our cybersecurity startups and entrepreneurs to build an ecosystem, it’s not the fact checks boxes that helps the societal resilience, it’s the act of everybody participating in the fact-checking process.

If you have a journalist’s mindset – both of my parents are journalists – then you’re less likely to be infected by the virus of the mind, so to speak. This is a very concrete project. We will work with your local startups and education technologists to jointly develop plans to enhance the societal resilience.

You said this project. What project?

We talked, for example, with your education technology startup, it’s called Teachers Lead Tech, the TLT. The TLT has already very successfully incentivizes…encouraged school children to boost their digital competencies around programming, around design thinking, computational thinking.

What we have learned is that they are also quite interested in developing the courses around cybersecurity and cyber-resilience, awareness, overcoming online harms. This is an area that we have a lot of experience in Taiwan.

We are very interested in joining forces and exploring together, how our investment in such education technologies can produce results, like better exercises, better ways to shape the online fact-checking ecosystems, that empower the civil society and not the state when it comes to overcoming online harm.

The Taiwanese fund will invest 250,000 Euros to Lithuanian startup and tech company?

That is in the talks. We’re working out the details right now, but the intention is to fund such explorations together.

Will it be only investment from Taiwan in the development of Lithuanian students’ and teachers’ digital skills?

It will be an open curriculum, open course. Basically, anyone who want to learn from the Taiwanese experience, the Taiwanese civil society code is free of copyright. It is open source.

Before our investment in Lithuania, already the Taiwanese fact-checking civil society source code is already used in Thailand. That was not a funding investment, that was a people-to-people tie. A joint development, if you will.

The difference here in Lithuania is that public entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship, startups that help the societal resilience while having a business model, is really thriving here in Lithuania.

We want to explore a different approach instead of just people-to-people ties or working with NGOs. We want to explore the possibility of working together in a more economically-informed development, so that we can accelerate the speed of full-time staff, developing across different time zones, on such societal resilience products and services.

Could Lithuania expect more investments in cybersecurity area?

Yes.

Could you specify what investments? When?

That’s for the board meeting of the National Institute of Cyber Security. The day I’m back, the week I’m back, is on the 17th. As the Chair of the board, I will share the stories of my Lithuanian visit. I will talk to the board of the National Institute of Cyber Security of the closeness in value and the thriving startup and unicorns that I met in Lithuania.

Together, in the board meeting, we will decide how much investments we will do from the NISC point of view. We’ll also seek out other investors outside of moda.

Will it be next week?

Yeah, it will be next week.

What amount of money Lithuania could expect this year?

That’s to be discussed in the board meeting.

We talk about cybersecurity sector, yes?

Yes.

Cybersecurity sector, it will be cooperation between public sector institutions or with private sector?

It will be a public-private partnership to enhance the resilience of the civil society. This is called a people-public-private partnership. It is not just businesses and the government, but also, as I mentioned, educators, students, the civil society in general, that is truly empowered.

This is quite unique because both Taiwan and Lithuania believe that we should not concentrate power of surveillance or censorship to the state, but we should decentralize it in the civil society. This kind of collaboration is only possible between two very value-compatible partners.

Investments to the cybersecurity will be separate from investments to development of Lithuanians students and the teachers?

No, this is the same thing. Overcoming online harm in the form of digital information, that is part of the mandate of our National Institute of Cyber Security.

Which is why I stress that it’s not just good cyber habits, cyber hygienes of zero-trust network, not just strong authentication and signature tools like these, these are the building blocks, but the best tools are not useful if the people do not use it.

You may have the best mask and hand sanitizers and vaccines and cure, but if the citizens do not use them or doesn’t even believe in them, they’re not very useful. The awareness, the resilience-building in the mindset is as important as the tools. These two must work in tandem, not separated, as your question implied.

On Wednesday, Lithuania…yes, I asked about letter of intent. I would like to ask, our Minister of Economy and Innovation, in a press conference on Wednesday said that Lithuania is a champion of European Union in fintech sector. Moreover, she said that Lithuania is waiting for Taiwan companies in Lithuania. Do Taiwanese IT or fintech companies have any specific plans to invest in Lithuania, operate with Lithuania?

That’s why we brought with our delegates this time, the Chief Secretary of the Taiwanese Financial Supervisory Council, because the FSC in Taiwan runs the fintech lab, and is the competent authority of the fintech Sandbox Act, let’s refer to it this way.

We’ve found that Lithuanian fintech community is extremely agile, in a sense that your governance system is very adaptable.

You said about community, what community…?

The fintech community.

“Extremely…,” you mentioned?

Agile. Agile, like adaptable. Very quickly responding to the societal expectations.

Also, the governance system. The multi-stakeholder governance system here allows for a, as I mentioned, creative interpretation of the legal structure and a very inclusive way for the people’s expectation of financing products and services, beyond their traditional way of doing banking, to thrive here. Early adopter, I may say that.

The key priority for us, as moda, is to ensure that our FSC, as represented by Chief Secretary, learns about the inspiring use cases, the inspiring ideas, and the benefits that these innovations can bring to the common people, to the citizens. That is the case we need to make.

Then second, we need to bring our unicorns, our startup, and steer their funders, the impact investors, the angels, and so on, to see the very inspiring cases here, because fintech, more so than any physical product, can be born global. It can operate across time zones and jurisdictions far more easily than manufacturing and other fields.

I would like to ask, do Taiwanese IT or fintech companies have specific plans about investment in Lithuania? Can we hear any news in the nearest future about your investments in these sectors?

What they’re planning now is to, first, see face to face the Lithuanian innovators. As I got their…Can I say this, the delegates from the Lithuanian ICT community to Taiwan? Yes? Their representative says yes.

We will strive to organize some time this year, a delegate of the ICT – including fintech entrepreneurs – from the Lithuanian community to visit Taiwan, to make the bridges to the investors and the local startups and unicorns in Taiwan, to make sure that they can find a compatibility between themselves.

In order to facilitate that meeting, our Financial Supervisory Council need to first be familiar with the Lithuania innovations, for it to be regulatory-compliant and legal in Taiwan, for the collaboration to happen.

What we’re doing now is to build bridges between the public sector in Taiwan and your public sector regulators and innovators. The private sector-to-private sector meeting will take place sometime this year, hopefully soon.

One is scheduled, the visit of Lithuanian delegation to Taiwanese ICT delegation.

It’s still in the planning.

Do they have in mind – not you personally, but Taiwanese authority, government, businesses – any obstacles or unsolved problems which could prevent to develop or complicate political relations between Taiwan and Lithuania?

Mostly, it’s awareness. When I got this card, I’m told that I’m the fourth Taiwanese to be a e-resident. Many Taiwanese friends of mine are Estonian e-residents. There is a branding or awareness gap here because what you offer here is very mature, is very highly developed. It is a model to many developing ecosystems. The Taiwanese people do not generally know about this.

This is what my visit is aiming to do, is to make sure that everyone in Taiwan, at least in the startup and fintech ecosystems, understand what Lithuanians have to offer, and what a mature and value-compatible environment it is. Just awareness is the largest gap to overcome.

Fortunately, we have pretty good representative and communication experts. We aim to close that gap as soon as possible.

With Lithuanian Economy and Innovations Minister, you also discussed possibilities for Lithuania and Taiwan to participate in reconstruction of Ukraine. Is Taiwan going to participate in this process, and how Taiwan will participate?

We, individually…I mean, Lithuania to Ukraine, Taiwan to Ukraine. Humanitarian aid, donations, and so on, that has been going on for a while.

What we are planning now is to join our efforts to coordinate, to figure out which places that needs reconstruction, which component is better sourced from Taiwanese providers, which one is from Lithuanian providers, and how our components work together, to work a very smooth digital experience infrastructure for the Ukrainian schools and people in need.

The main innovation here, if you call that, is the planning part. One of the very important thing here to stress is that the Taiwanese people do not have a fatigue – as some have called it – when it comes to aiding the Ukrainian effort and war, because we are like mirror images.

We feel a very strong need to let the world understand that it is not just value-compatible, but it is also a matter of, I would say, almost existential when we see the situation happening in Ukraine. It wakes everyone up in Taiwan. We want to send this message to the world. My Lithuanian counterparts, they also voiced very similar messages.

Those two messages, individually, are strong. It already made international headlines. When we work together to help Ukraine, that will even more amplify our common voices.

As I understand, Taiwan is going to participate in reconstruction of Ukraine, yes?

We’re ready to commit to that, yes.

The last question. You are one of the first highest-ranking Taiwanese officials who visits Lithuania. Minister of National Development visited Vilnius in 2021, Speaker of Taiwan parliament was in Lithuania last year. Do other Taiwan’s ministers have any plans to visit Lithuania, and maybe such plans have Taiwan’s President or Prime Minster?

This is a interesting question because there are chances that around the end of this month, there will be a cabinet reshuffle. After I go back to Taiwan, there may be some reconfigurations of the cabinet, the size of which we don’t know yet. Right after that, I will relay your question to my colleagues in the cabinet.

Ministers – your colleagues – have specific plans to visit Lithuania?

Let me phrase this this way, many current colleagues I have in the cabinet are all very pro-Lithuania. In fact, the same time as I visit, there’s a delegate from Lithuania to our Prime Minister and to other ministers. What’s important here is to continue this goodwill and broaden the aspects.

For example, in the previous talks, electronic signature, e-residency was not in the previous rounds of MoUs and LoIs. Now that we have this, and cybersecurity and digital resilience, we would touch upon, for example, fintech, which has already brought Chief Secretary of FSC here.

If we broaden this touch into educational technology, civic technology, environmental technology, that will also then attract other parts of the cabinet.

What about Taiwan’s President, about possibilities to visit Lithuania?

I’m not briefed on that.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.