A new threat from China faces Taiwan’s military: Trolls with drones

CNN
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With the sun shining, drinks on the table and music in the air, it looks like the young men in the video, which has gone viral on Chinese social media, have picked a great day for a picnic.

Dressed casually in jeans and T-shirts, shorts and sandals, and chatting jovially in Mandarin as they hunch over a controller and screen, it’s hard to believe they could be up to anything shady – until one of them shouts excitedly, “I got a tank!”

But these men aren’t playing a computer game. They are flying drones over a military site on a nearby Taiwan-controlled island.

The 15-second video clip is among a number of videos that have popped up recently on the Chinese social media site Weibo and show what appear to be civilian-grade drones trolling Taiwan’s military. The island’s military later confirmed these mysterious menaces are indeed civilian drones from mainland China.

The videos show detailed, drones’-eye footage of military installations and personnel on Taiwan’s outlying Kinmen islands. Accompanied by soundtracks ranging from ballads to dance music and plenty of emojis, the clips seem designed to highlight the unpreparedness of Taiwan’s troops.

One video captures the moment four soldiers from Taiwan realize they are being watched by a drone that’s hovering in the sky above their guard post. Caught off guard, they respond by throwing stones at the intruding drone, which zooms in so close you can make out the faces of individual soldiers.

Video footage of these bizarre encounters has gone viral on Chinese social media and is attracting hundreds of comments mocking Taiwan’s military. The clips seems to expose a stunning vulnerability: the ability of Chinese drones to photograph restricted military sites in Taiwan at any time.

Analysts say the footage being beamed across the internet – showing military sites and personnel in fine detail for all the world to see – is at best embarrassing for Taiwan and at worst, outright dangerous.

The drone incursions come amid increased tensions following a visit by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan, a self-governing democracy of nearly 24 million people, in August.

That trip angered China’s ruling Communist Party – which views Taiwan as part of its territory, despite never having governed it – and it responded by launching unprecedented military drills around the island, sending warplanes across the Taiwan Strait and firing missiles over the main island.

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen has claimed the drone incursions are the latest ratcheting up of this pressure; a new front in China’s “gray-zone” warfare tactics to intimidate the island. On September 1, after warning it would exercise its rights to self-defense, Taiwan shot down a drone for the first time.

But, provocative though the footage is, it is difficult to be sure exactly who is behind the drone incursions.

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