The Berlin Freedom Conference: Taiwan’s Trailblazing Cyber Ambassador Audrey Tang On How to Rescue and Strengthen Democracy
The message has never been more urgent: more than 70% of the world’s population now lives under authoritarian systems.
This week, Audrey Tang — Taiwan’s former Digital Minister and current Cyber Ambassador — delivered a compelling appearance at the Berlin Freedom Conference, held in Berlin on 10 November 2025.
What the Conference Was About
The Berlin Freedom Conference convened at the Gasometer Schöneberg in Berlin, bringing together more than 60 global speakers and around 1,000 participants from across politics, business, civil society and defense.
The conference’s raison d’être: democracies are under increasing pressure, and the event aimed to shift the dynamic away from reactive responses to authoritarianism toward proactive strategy and coordination.
Audrey’s Role and Why It Mattered
With her storied background in Taiwan — where she helped design and lead digital-governance tools, open-data initiatives and citizen-participation platforms — Audrey Tang brought a distinctly technology-and-people-centric viewpoint to the conference. Her presence underscored how freedom today is not just a matter of statecraft or defense policy, but also about how we build and govern digital infrastructure.
At the Berlin event, Audrey stood out by representing a democracy that has embedded technological competence and citizen inclusion into its structures — offering a model for others facing digital threats, erosion of trust and the disruption of traditional democratic processes.
Key Themes from Her Remarks
From technology as threat to technology as enabler: Audrey emphasised that tools like open-data portals, civic tech and citizen-driven platforms aren’t just conveniences, but essential infrastructure for free societies.
- Collective intelligence over top-down control: One of her signature perspectives is that real resilience comes when citizens participate meaningfully, not just when governments impose measures.
- Global solidarity, local action: While the Berlin conference gathered international voices, Audrey made clear that digital resilience must start at local, operational levels — in cities, communities, platforms — and scale upward through networked alliances.
- Democracy in the digital age needs defence: Much like other speakers at the conference, Audrey pointed out threats such as disinformation, algorithmic manipulation and authoritarian states exploiting digital vulnerabilities.
The conference narrative supported this: Berlin’s tourism & convention body noted that “more than 70 per cent of the world’s population now lives under authoritarian systems.”
What This Means for the Broader Conversation
Tang’s participation enriches the discussion on democratic resilience in three ways:
- Concrete governance innovation: Unlike some speakers who focused purely on ideals, her track record delivers usable examples of how technology and governance merge.
- Bridging regions: Audrey’s presence in Berlin helps connect Asia-Pacific democratic experiences with European and global contexts — reinforcing that freedom is not confined to one geography.
- Framing tech as values: She reinforces the idea that digital systems are not value-neutral; how they’re built, who can access them, how transparent they are — these are democratic questions.
Bottom Line
In a world where the architecture of freedom is increasingly shaped by code, platforms and networks, Audrey Tang’s voice at the Berlin Freedom Conference served as a timely reminder: safeguarding democracy isn’t just about elections, or treaties, or military deterrents. It’s about designing systems — digital, civic, institutional — that invite participation, accountability and transparency.
As Berlin inaugurates this conference as a recurring annual event, Tang’s contribution highlights that the battle for freedom in the 21st century is as much about software and civic infrastructure as it is about geopolitics.
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