Huckabee compares Israel to Taiwan, urges US cooperation with both against cyber threats

The US ambassador said cooperation among Israel, Taiwan, and the US is especially important amid growing cyber threats to critical infrastructure.

Taiwan “very much reminds me of Israel in many ways,” US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said during a panel at Tel Aviv University’s Cyber Week & AI Week on Wednesday.

He was joined on the panel by Ya-Ping (Abby) Lee, the representative of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Tel Aviv.

“Both countries have been at the forefront of creating a lot of the valuable technologies that the world enjoys. But there is something else: both are democracies; both allow their people to have freedom of speech and freedom of movement; women have equal roles in government and the private sector ... And that is what leads to the technological breakthroughs,” Huckabee said.

He stressed that cooperation among Israel, Taiwan, and the US is especially important amid growing cyber threats, saying that partnerships between countries in different parts of the world provide an important foundation for protecting critical infrastructure, systems, and essential services.

“Imagine the capacity to use technology in a way that, through the abuse of cyber ability, would in fact end up either injuring or killing masses of people,” Huckabee said.

“Every night when I go to sleep, there are people who are wide awake somewhere in the world trying to figure out how to use technology as a tool of destruction. That’s why what you do every day in your professional lives is a very critical part of protecting the rest of us,” he added.

'Technology is like fire'

Lee spoke about the importance of cooperation among Taiwan, Israel, and the US in the age of artificial intelligence.

“In the digital domain, there is no geographic border, only neighbors by values,” she said, emphasizing that international cooperation is key to developing new solutions and strengthening digital trust.

“Technology is like fire. It can be useful, but it also causes harm,” Lee added.