Profile | Taiwan's Chip, the KMT's Blind Spot, and the Cassandra Calling From Capitol Hill

Jason Hsu (許毓仁) has a talent for arriving early to uncomfortable truths.

In 2016, during his first term as a Kuomintang proportional-representation legislator, he co-sponsored a same-sex marriage bill with a DPP colleague — becoming the first KMT lawmaker to publicly back marriage equality. The backlash was swift: senior party figures called for his expulsion, he broke down in tears at a caucus meeting, and he was publicly named on the floor. He voted yes anyway. Three years later, when the law finally passed, seven of his KMT colleagues voted with him on key clauses.

Now, a decade on and speaking from Washington rather than the Legislative Yuan, Hsu finds himself in a strikingly similar position. The rallying cry has changed — from marriage equality to defense spending — but the role has not. Once again, he is the first figure from the KMT to stand up publicly and say what his party does not want to hear.

When the KMT unveiled its rival defense appropriations bill — a NT$380 billion-plus-N counter-proposal to the Lai administration's NT$1.25 trillion package — on March 5, the Ministry of National Defense issued a four-point warning the same night. The following morning, Hsu went further.

Speaking publicly from his perch as a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, he declared the KMT bill flawed on grounds of feasibility, technical practicality, and legislative precedent, and urged the party to "think twice, then think again." His intervention came after months of watching the opposition repeatedly block the Lai administration's defense supplementary budget in the legislature — and after he had already raised the alarm, on social media and, most recently, before the United States Congress.

"National security must not become a tool of partisan competition," he told the U.S.–China Economic and Security Review Commission on Capitol Hill on March 2, Eastern Time. The hearing's official subject was undersea cable vulnerability in the Taiwan Strait and subsea infrastructure resilience across the Indo-Pacific — topics squarely within his current research brief — but in his closing remarks, he pivoted without warning to Taiwan's legislative stalemate, urging all parties to stand together when the state's survival is at stake.

Days later, back in Taipei for one of his brief visits — he returns roughly every two to three months — Hsu spoke with Storm Media at his hotel, casually dressed, a marked contrast to the black suit and red tartan tie he had worn on Capitol Hill. He returns to see family, then flies out again within days. He did not know who had recommended him to the commission. "They contacted me and I asked how they had heard of me," he said. "They said someone recommended you. Probably someone in the Washington circle."

Hsu left the legislature in 2020 and has since stepped largely away from KMT affairs. His American connections are not new: in 2016, he used contacts in the startup, blockchain, and technology sectors to help then-KMT chairman Eric Chu organize a U.S. visit during the presidential campaign. He later served as secretary-general of the Monte Jade Science and Technology Association, a Chinese-American technology network.

In January 2022, he accepted an invitation to Harvard's Kennedy School as one of fifteen visiting scholars selected globally that year. He subsequently became the first Taiwanese visiting researcher at the Paul Tsai China Center at Yale Law School, and completed a master's degree in public administration at Harvard. In January 2025, coinciding with Donald Trump's return to the White House, he joined the Hudson Institute as a senior fellow to research defense supply chains, asymmetric warfare, Indo-Pacific strategy, and Taiwan Strait gray-zone operations.

The choice of institution was deliberate. The Hudson Institute — situated on Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and the Capitol — is a conservative think tank aligned with Republican policy circles, and Hsu said that alignment matters now more than it ever has. Taiwan has historically cultivated closer ties with more liberal, Democrat-leaning Washington institutions. Under Trump's second term, he argued, that legacy network carries limited sway.

"Trump has merged geopolitics, national security, defense, and technology into a single framework," Hsu said. "The way he approaches the U.S.–China relationship and how he views Taiwan is very different from his first term. I want to be in Washington speaking for Taiwan — and Hudson has channels to the Trump circle."

He was candid about the limits of any think tank's influence over this particular president. "The conventional foreign policy establishment doesn't have much sway over Trump. When it comes to actual decisions, he operates more on personal instinct." But Hudson, he noted, still maintains access. "We can get deeper information about what's happening in the White House, and through exchanges with people in the administration, we can understand how Trump is thinking at any given moment."

Hsu's extended Washington residency since Trump's inauguration has produced assessments that diverge sharply from those of his former KMT colleagues. During Taiwan-U.S. tariff negotiations, he publicly warned the opposition not to fall into what he called a "criticism syndrome." His broader read of the second Trump term is that it is simultaneously reorganizing the global order and rebalancing America's bilateral relationships through the twin levers of defense and trade.

His framing of Taiwan's strategic position was direct, even blunt. Washington treats Taiwan as a "chip," he said — and the question is whether that chip generates value for the United States. "If Taiwan can make America feel it can't do without us, we become a strong positive chip at the table," he said. "But if we become a negative chip, we can very easily be traded away, swapped out, sacrificed, or handed to the other side."

The danger for Taiwan, in his view, is not whether it has a seat at the table — it is what kind of piece it represents once seated. And internal political division, he argued, actively degrades that position. In a legislature where the ruling party lacks a majority, partisan conflict is structurally predictable, but Hsu said it is also strategically dangerous: it prevents a unified external posture and creates openings for Beijing to exploit through gray-zone pressure. "Parties can compete," he said, "but on national security and national interest, they must stand on the same line."

When the KMT released its NT$380 billion counter-proposal and claimed to have reached an "understanding" with the American side, Hsu immediately queried his Washington contacts. What he found contradicted the party's public claim: the U.S. had not accepted the NT$380 billion-plus-N framework, and no such understanding existed. In his assessment, the KMT had likely only notified the American Institute in Taiwan of the proposal. "AIT acknowledging receipt doesn't mean the U.S. has agreed to it, or that any understanding has been reached," he said.

His substantive critique was equally pointed. The U.S., he said, would never accept an approach to arms procurement that treats the process like a food-delivery platform — ordering a little today and promising to reorder later as needed. With active conflicts running across multiple theaters, Taiwan cannot assume the weapons it wants will even be available in production queues. "Are we really saying: we'll buy a bit now, and if the PLA actually attacks, we'll convene an emergency legislative session, pass a budget, and ask the U.S. to ship it over?" he asked.

The procurement mechanism has its own procedural logic. Under the Taiwan Relations Act framework, Taiwan submits its defense requirements; the U.S. draws up a list and assesses it; the U.S. formally proposes a sale; Congress approves; the president notifies; and only then does procurement proceed. The Executive Yuan's bill, in Hsu's reading, reflects what has already been negotiated between Taipei and Washington — what America is prepared to sell and Taiwan is positioned to receive. The KMT and TPP alternatives, even if passed by the legislature, may not translate into deliverable purchases. "How can they not understand this?" he said.

Hsu also took issue with the KMT's decision to strip drone procurement from its version of the bill. The issue carries personal weight. In September 2025, he traveled to Kyiv — a fourteen-hour train journey from the Polish border — to study firsthand how unmanned aerial systems have shaped Ukraine's defense against Russia. After returning, he outlined four reforms he said Taiwan needed to implement immediately, priorities that aligned closely with what the Ministry of National Defense had built into the Executive Yuan's draft.

Drawing on that experience, he described drones, automated weapons systems, and satellite communications as essential and interdependent elements of a modern defense architecture — not optional line items. Cutting the special defense budget, or phasing and conditioning appropriations, risks producing structural gaps: "equipment without ammunition, or soldiers without equipment," he said. "People need to be alert to the fact that China's pressure on Taiwan is advancing gradually through gray-zone operations. If your defense isn't adequate — if the walls aren't high enough — you can be broken through all at once."

According to information obtained by Storm Media, at least three versions of an arms bill circulated within the KMT before the party formally released its NT$380 billion-plus-N proposal on March 5. These included proposals of NT$810 billion from legislator Hsu Chiao-hsin (徐巧芯) and NT$900 billion from a figure associated with former KMT chairman Eric Chu's camp, Taoyuan city councilor Ling Tao (凌濤). Jason Hsu said those figures, while still below the Executive Yuan's request, were at least grounded in a realistic assessment of Taiwan's needs and would have given negotiators a credible starting position. The version the party ultimately published, he said, was something else entirely.

"Walk in with that, and you've already surrendered," he said. "If this version passes, I think it would be a disaster."

The political symbolism of U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, in his reading, is not primarily about individual line items. It is about whether Taiwan wants the United States as a partner. "If you're going to pick a fight with Washington, the American response will come quickly." He warned the KMT to consider the downstream electoral consequences: when swing voters and younger generations broadly support defense self-reliance, the party risks handing the DPP an effortless narrative — that the KMT is pro-Beijing, anti-American, and blocking defense procurement.

His broader assessment of Trump's second term was unsentimental. Uncertainty is high, he said, and the administration's support for Taiwan is more transactional than before — a shift that has fed growing skepticism about U.S. reliability. But unless Taiwan intends to align fully with China, he argued, America remains indispensable. What concerns him is that U.S. congressional members are now openly criticizing the KMT over both tariffs and arms sales, deepening a trust deficit in Washington. "The KMT should be a party that wants to govern," he said. "But the current mindset seems to be about retaliation and revenge. I think that's wrong."

Hsu left the KMT's orbit after his legislative term ended in 2020 and is no longer certain whether he remains a party member. He is clear, however, about how he frames his current role. Whether testifying before Congress or posting on social media, he speaks as a Washington think-tank researcher advocating for Taiwan's interests — not as a partisan actor. "People saying I've gone green, or whatever — I think that's just narrow-minded," he said.

The parallel with his earlier career is not lost on him. In 2016, he stood up as the first KMT lawmaker to back marriage equality and endured the consequences. Now, on an entirely different issue, he finds himself once again the first figure from his party's orbit to speak out publicly — calling on its younger, more locally rooted wing to follow, and urging members to file corrective amendments during the review process even if the party's legislative position cannot now be reversed.

He describes himself, with some self-deprecation, as "a crow calling out of turn" — too direct, perhaps hurting old colleagues along the way. But he is equally direct about what he is not. "I am not going to the DPP looking for a position."

Whether his voice from Washington ultimately shapes the KMT's calculus — or simply echoes without consequence — remains an open question. （Related： 180,000 Germans Flooding Taiwan for TRR Gold Card? Viral Rumor Completely Debunked ｜ Latest ）

​Original Article in Chinese​