Tsai to keynote Stanford DEFCON on tech, defense and national resilience

Former President Tsai Ing-wen will deliver the opening keynote at Stanford DEFCON's 2026 Technology and National Security Conference on Oct. 7, her first trip to the United States since leaving office in 2024, Focus Taiwan reported. Her office said she will discuss Taiwan's experience in critical technologies and semiconductors alongside partnerships, defense, and national resilience.

Stanford's Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation announced the invitation on social media, describing Tsai's presidency as spanning an increasingly complex Indo-Pacific security environment. The conference is designed as a cross-domain forum linking academia, government, defense, and technology industry audiences around artificial intelligence, unmanned systems, space technology, and commercial intelligence.

Office spokesperson Tsai Shu-ching said Stanford DEFCON aims to turn emerging technology debates into practical national-security tools. She cast Tsai's remarks as a chance for international audiences to better understand Taiwan's role on the technology and democracy front lines while facing new balances among innovation, resilience, and security.

Separately, Stanford's Hoover Institution has invited Tsai to speak on Oct. 8 about democracy, resilience, and global security through its Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region program with Stanford in Government, according to Focus Taiwan. The twin campus appearances keep defense and democratic resilience themes on the agenda across two days.

The Straits Times, citing Reuters, noted that Beijing routinely objects to foreign travel by senior Taiwanese figures, including former leaders, and that China's foreign ministry did not immediately comment on the planned U.S. visit. Tsai has traveled to Britain, France, and Canada since leaving office, while President Lai Ching-te has not yet visited the United States under the current Trump administration.

For Taiwan defence readers, the Stanford booking matters because the agenda explicitly mixes unmanned systems and other dual-use technologies with national-security policy rather than treating the visit as a purely ceremonial alumni speech. Tsai's framing pairs semiconductor strength with defense and resilience messaging at a U.S. campus hub for Indo-Pacific security debate.

Washington remains Taipei's primary arms supplier despite the absence of formal diplomatic ties, and U.S. university national-security forums often double as venues where Taiwanese leaders brief elite policy and industry audiences. The Oct. 7 keynote therefore sits at the intersection of technology supply-chain security and conventional defense cooperation narratives.

Confirmation of the itinerary keeps attention on how Taiwan projects its defense-tech story abroad in the week after the first F-16V Block 70 jets arrived and as U.S. unmanned vendors court Taiwanese factories. Tsai's office presented the trip as experience-sharing rather than a government negotiation mission.

This report was produced through TaiwanDefence’s automated publishing system and includes links to its supporting sources.