Lai Nominates All-Talk, Anti-China "Black Bear" for Legislator
The Storm Media Editorial, November 21, 2023
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) announced its legislative election party list and ranked Shen Po-yang, president of the “Kuma Academy” and activist in strengthening civilian preparedness against China’s cognitive warfare, as the second nominee. Even Minister of National Defense Chiu Kuo-Cheng straightforwardly expressed, “Kuma Academy is a place for a group of people to play BB guns in the wild during holidays. This kind of ‘army’ is like a guerrilla.” Minister Chiu’s statement is rather tactful because Shen is nothing more than an Internet celebrity who engages in cognitive warfare and promotes the illusion of national subjugation. He has now become the new representative of the DPP, which also foretells the future national defense policy line of the DPP.
Kuma Academy refuted Minister Chiu’s comments, stating that it has never taught people to shoot "paintball" or offered any related training; Kuma Academy has never built an "army" in the past, at present, nor will it do so in the future. Since there is no shooting training and no establishment of any army, from where does the Kuma Academy claim to recruit and gather 3 million warriors in three years? What then qualifies the president of the Academy to become a legislator?
Internet Celebrity Who Promotes the Sense of National Doom But Plays BB Guns on Weekends
Shen was a famous tutor of criminal law who studied the sociology of law in the United States. He is teaching criminology at a university after returning to Taiwan. Despite his background, there was no news of him giving suggestions of prevention and control to help Taiwanese people from being tricked into Southeast Asia, nor were there any demonstration of knowledge with the Chinese Communist Party and the People's Liberation Army (PLA) on his part. He, however, hyped the claim that Taiwan is penetrated by the "fifth column," and advocates that Taiwan must fortify its awareness of the enemy. In other words, he only can play the role of helping circulate the fear of national subjugation by fighting in cognitive warfare.
Shen is an anti-China hardliner. He is accustomed to exploiting trivial messages to propagandize the fear of national subjugation in Taiwan by acting as the leader of the cyber-warriors, siding with the DPP party line. He often makes accusations without evidence, without a subject, and without knowing who the target is, but often uses “the conspiracy of Chinese Communist Party” as his argument. As KMT Taipei City Councilor Hsu Chiao-hsin pointed out, Shen's rhetoric consists of three parts: Attribute all messages that are disadvantageous to the DPP to cognitive operations of Communist China; the DPP must conduct cognitive warfare to counter those of the Communist Party; deny all allegations in the event where DPP's spread of disinformation or cognitive warfare operations are caught. And in the past few years, have we really caught any examples of DPP cognitive warfare? There is indeed one person who is a pro-DPP writer Lin Wei-feng.
The DPP has criticized the "cognitive warfare" carried out by Communist China and its supporters. In fact, DPP members themselves are "anti-China on the surface but privately pro-China." Shen said that TikTok is a threat to Taiwan’s national security, but Taipei City DPP Councilor Hsu Shu-hua and Legislator Lin Chu-yin happily film videos for TikTok. Legislator Lin forced iQIYI (mainland Chinese-owned subscription video-on-demand streaming service) out of Taiwan, but she watched iQIYI programs herself at work in a Legislative Yuan session. Not to mention there is other revealing information concerning DPP Legislator Chao Tien-Lin who had a long-term extra-marital affair with a mainland Chinese woman.
Shen Plan to Mobilize 3 Million “Black Bears” Reaps Massive Fortune
The Kuma Academy received NT$600 million (about US$19.1 million) from UMC founder Robert Hsing-cheng Tsao, claiming to build an army group of 3 million “Black Bear” warriors in three years. This year has passed in a hurry, while Shen has become famous, waiting for an opportunity to make a fortune from national crises, his proposed “Black Bear” legion is still nowhere to be found. The Kuma Academy proposed a "Civil Defense Training Project" to raise approximately NT$5 million (about US$159,850).
The academy’s civil defense courses cost NT$2,300 (about US$73) per class for sale, and the civil defense tool kit costs NT$2,000 dollars (about US$64), which is several times more expensive than those sold online. This anti-China business by trash-talk is indeed a business with guaranteed profit. As long as you are in line with the DPP party and promote their propaganda, you will be rewarded with a big fortune.
Shen is not the only advocate to propose an all-out civil defense plan. If the DPP or Shen intends to initiate a civil defense framework similar to Ukraine’s Territorial Defense Force, the National Guard system of the United States, or the Japanese Reserves, in determining legislator candidates, why would the DPP prefer Shen's "Black Bear" over Enoch Wu’s initiative of Forward Alliance? Both Wu and former Chief of Staff General Lee Hsi-min and proposed the same idea of a Homeland Defense Force, aiming at promoting Taiwan to establish a credible deterrence force by making good use of all available resources, including reserve forces.
The legislative election party list represents and reflects the image and value of a political party. The DPP’s arrangement for Shen to enter the Legislative Yuan demonstrates that it intends to highlight the value of the "Black Bear" style of civil defense. Now that the "Five National Security Laws" are in place, what other laws should be needed and enacted in the Legislative Yuan? Shen said that in the future, he would like to draft bills on issues such as uncovering the Chinese Communist Party’s agents in Taiwan, response to gray zone operations, and national defense reforms. Shen uses his expertise as a member of the advisory committee of the Ministry of National Defense to justify his legitimacy and professional capacity in national defense whenever questioned.
Compared with the Kuomintang’s (KMT) nomination of former Navy admiral Chen Yeong-kang in its legislative election party list, who has actively promoted and supported the Indigenous Defense Submarine program, Admiral Chen is a seasoned expert and is best qualified to supervise and review the many controversies concerning the first prototype submarine. As the admiral competes against the president of Kuma Academy, in comparing the two, people see that one is a senior general who is well versed in defense affairs, and the other an Internet celebrity who specializes in cognitive warfare. The contrast between these two candidates’ professional knowledge is so obvious. In addition, KMT nominated information technology expert Ge Ju-chun and Professor Weng Hsia-ling, a former member of the National Communications Commission (NCC), all attach great importance to "information warfare," and both their information technology expertise far surpasses Shen's.
With Transfer of Political Power in Sight, Self-Restraining and Self-Amusing Depictions of Cognitive Warfare
Shen was chosen to represent the DPP as a legislator-at-large because the DPP strongly believes that the military admires the KMT’s authoritarian past and that whether military personnel can truly identify with and fight for Taiwan is questionable. Therefore, it believes some kind of “transitional justice” should be implemented to help establish a “true Taiwanese” national defense system. It is not difficult to imagine that in the future, Kuma Academy will promote the establishment of more similar "civil defense organizations" and actively request the military to provide manpower and venue support. In order to defend against the mainland, Kuma Academy and its affiliated organizations will also more actively request the support of the national military to completely sever the army’s awareness of its origin history within the mainland from before 1949.
Over the past eight years, the DPP has gained a lot in Taiwan’s politics and relations with the United States. The key strategy to this is marginalizing its KMT opponents. Although DPP Chairman and presidential candidate William Lai promised to follow President Tsai Ing-wen's policy line for national security, he has moved to the fundamentalist DPP "Taiwan faction" line. From the green fundamentalists’ perspective, this type of move should have been implemented long ago, but it is also a sensitive area that the Tsai administration has always avoided touching.
Now Shen is on the way to enter the halls of the Legislative Yuan and will stand to question Taiwan's "cognitive warfare" plans, the so-called "protection of peace of Taiwan" will sound like only a show, and "resistance against China” and “anti-Communism” is the real purpose. Mr. Lai’s decision to nominate and empower this kind of political talk star to lead the party policy line in national defense and employ trash talk to build a “hedge-hog defense” against China will simply derail the reality of security threat, and as a result, put Taiwan in danger. It is difficult to imagine what the personnel arrangement of the national security team will be once Mr. Lai is elected.