Thank you all so much for our round table. It’s been a great way to finish the week, and I appreciate the work that went into it.

Well, thank you. Thanks so much.

You think the answer to fake news is fact-checking?

What do you wish people asked you about more often when it comes to your work?

I can definitely relate to that idea of learning how to break through polarization and be a facilitator through the kinds of experiences that being gender non-conforming brings.

I think it’s remarkable that we’ve got through a whole interview, we’re both trans, and it hasn’t been the first order of conversation. I think that’s really refreshing to be able to have a wide-ranging conversation about the work that we do. But I will ask: How has your identity ...

That’s how you know that we’re the real Foreign Policy and the real Audrey Tang.

Oh, right.

I’m just curious.

Come on in. Come on in.

Foreign Policy, at TECRO.

Cool. You want to take one?

You think that in the future, there could be 30 videos of a hypothetical candidate, and we’re going to need to give people using social media platforms an understanding that they can only really listen to one that has been brought through a very official channel.

You could have a three-foot-tall Minister Tang going to a local school to give an approachable conversation? I can see how that could be weaponized by nefarious actors.

That’s amazing.

Tell me about that.

Really?

What’s the wildest deep fake that you’ve seen in your line of work?

How do you think major platforms like Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, YouTube, should be taking steps to recalibrate their offerings, given what we know now about how they’ve been used to spread a lot of disinformation that has, at times, derailed public conversations around politics?

Speaking more about the dark side, what have you learned in the last year about electoral manipulation that you think everyone should know?

Tell me about how your experience as a white hat hacker has changed the way you approach your job?

It goes way back. That’s remarkable.

When did you first get a sense that you would want to build your career around the Internet and governance? When did this occur to you as something that you could make your focus in this way?

That’s fantastic. I wouldn’t mind stopping by for a little.

That’s really interesting.

This is a country where there’s no shortage of guns, and people express a lot of anger online. How do you deal with those most extreme outliers? I’m sure they’re not making complaints about the tax filing system, but they’re a big part of political discourse in the US when ...

That’s really interesting. I’m thinking about mapping this onto a US context. If we were to pull in Twitter trolls and attempt to have a co-creation workshop, I wonder how that would go. How did the government address safety concerns?

Or even being toxic. How have they been brought into the mix of actually shaping policy?

What’s a memory that stands out to you of a setting where you’ve pulled in someone who has been expressing dissent online?

Exactly. So many countries are in the process of democratic backsliding. What do you think that finding a Taiwan-inspired model could do for those countries that are in that gray zone between democracy and authoritarianism?

Radical transparency can be seen as a driver of deepening democracy, in contrast with the more twinned authoritarian impulses of something like a social credit system, where the government is trying to pull citizens into its alignment.

What are some of the other ways that you find radical transparency has reshaped democratic culture in Taiwan? I know you’ve said that Internet and democracy are intertwined in a pretty unique way. Tell me a little more about that.

When it comes to moving the conversation in the US beyond a succession on bots and trolls, how do you think that conversation needs to be refocused to move it forward in the US context, from what you’ve seen?

You mentioned that this is a conversation that Taiwan has been having perhaps six years ahead of the rest of the world. I can see, with the general preoccupation with electoral interference and your eye towards protecting your elections in 2020, what kinds of conversations are you having now that ...

There’s been so much hype about 5G and which countries are moving to ban it, which countries are moving to restrict it, which countries are embracing it. From your own experiences, what kind of evidence have you seen that the PRC is using these networks for espionage?

Tell me a bit about your visit to the US. What are you hoping to achieve here? Tell me a little bit about what you’ve working to build.

I heard they’re uncorruptible, which is something we should all aim to be.

It sounds like a good group to have around.

A whole fleet.

Minister Tang, I will start off with a more personal question, which is tell me about the first family of Taiwan, which I hear includes some cats and dogs.