Why Southeast Asia is Drifting Away from Washington

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The geopolitical landscape of Southeast Asia is undergoing a tectonic shift. For decades, the United States was viewed as the indispensable powerthe security guarantor that allowed the region’s tiger economies to flourish. However, recent events, culminating in the devastating economic fallout of the Iran war, have accelerated a trend that many in Washington failed to see coming: Southeast Asia is increasingly looking toward Beijing, not out of ideological love, but out of pragmatic necessity. This shift is not merely a preference for one superpower over another; it is a profound vote of no confidence in the predictability and reliability of Western leadership. The Credibility Gap: From Trade Wars to Kinetic Wars The erosion of trust didn't happen overnight. It began with a series of inconsistent trade policies and sudden tariffs that left regional exportersfrom Malaysia to Vietnamreeling. When global leadership feels like a moving target, Southeast Asian nations, which prioritize...
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Taiwan’s Fact checkers Battle Chinese Disinformation and AI

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At a restaurant nine years ago, Taiwanese engineer Charles Yeh saw his mother-in-law removing green onions from her beef noodles. She said they might damage the liver in response to Yeh's inquisitive question, citing information she had learned from a forwarded message. Yeh was perplexed by this because his family had never had any problems or complaints about eating green onions. And it was this occurrence that started Yeh's fight in Taiwan against misinformation.

With the goal of dispelling this false knowledge, Yeh composed a blog article and distributed it over the Line chat service. Soon after the post became popularity, Yeh started getting requests for more precise and up-to-date information from complete strangers. When Yeh realized how important fact-checking was, he founded MYGoPen in 2015. The name means “don’t be fooled again” in Taiwanese.

MyGoPen's user base exploded, going from 50,000 in just two years to over 400,000 at now. MyGoPen handled 1.3 million fact-check queries in 2023, dispelling myths about anything from false accusations about politicians to toxins in bananas. Other fact-checking groups like DoubleThink Lab, Cofacts, and Taiwan FactCheck Center were influenced by Yeh's work.

The danger of misinformation increased along with the number of fact-checking initiatives, particularly from China. According to the Varieties of Democracy project at the University of Göttingen, Taiwan is the main target of foreign disinformation, especially during election seasons. Taiwan leads the world in terms of China's effect on society and media, according to Doublethink Lab, which monitors China's influence in 82 nations.

A February 2023 occurrence brought this threat's seriousness to light. A video purportedly showed 100 Chinese fishing boats counterattacking close to Taiwan's Kinmen islands following a collision involving Chinese fishermen and Taiwan's coast guard. This was refuted by MyGoPen, which demonstrated that the film was from a different period and place in China.

Jaw Nian Huang, an associate professor at National Chengchi University in Taiwan, observes that Beijing has switched from direct to indirect deception tactics. For example, China indirectly questioned the United States' position toward Taiwan by using the Israel-Gaza conflicts to criticize American global politics. Because these tales are founded on opinion rather than fact, they are more difficult to refute.

The fight against misinformation is further complicated with the addition of artificial intelligence. According to a Thomson Foundation study, deepfakes and artificial intelligence (AI)-generated fake voices were widely employed during the 2024 presidential election. Eve Chu, the head of the Taiwan FactCheck Center, calls the advancement of AI "unstoppable." She draws attention to the deliberate propagation of misinformation concerning election tampering on TikTok with the intention of weakening Taiwan's democratic system.

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