Policy and Regulation covers the rules that govern who can buy Taiwanese drones, what those drones may contain, and where they can be sold. That spans Taiwanese export licensing, United States measures including NDAA sourcing restrictions and Blue UAS listing, allied procurement rules that exclude Chinese-origin components, and the sanctions and entity-listing regimes that determine which counterparties are viable.
Compliance requirements are the most common reason a promising sourcing conversation stalls, and they change often enough that last year's understanding is unreliable. Coverage here explains what a rule requires in practice, whom it applies to, and what documentation a buyer or supplier should expect to produce.
Policy & Regulation
ITRI plans to transfer neodymium and dysprosium refining technology to private industry this year, and a national recycling cluster is forming around it. Taiwan still has zero domestic rare earth reserves. Here's why that gap may be more addressable than it looks — and what it means for drone motor magnets specifically.
Sylvaine Li · Aug 24, 2026
Policy & Regulation
Days after Washington signed the Section 232 drone tariffs, the first Taiwanese responses are in from companies and from the government. Both are worth reading closely because both are rational, but both skip past the question that will decide who actually benefits.
Sylvaine Li · Aug 18, 2026
Policy & Regulation
Trump's Section 232 drone tariffs take effect September 3. Taiwan's 15% rate is a ceiling, not a gift — conditional on allied content certified by the US importer, through a Commerce process that doesn't exist yet. Our first read of the proclamation and all four annexes, including what's covered, what isn't, and what we can't yet know.
Sylvaine Li · Aug 14, 2026
Policy & Regulation
Britain has no component-origin rule of its own, so a British contractor bought against an American one. That statute doesn't cover boats, doesn't reach inside a camera, and nobody certifies compliance with it. Both Washington and Brussels are rewriting the standard right now — and Taiwan's suppliers will be answering the new questions.
Sylvaine Li · Aug 11, 2026
Policy & Regulation
Can a European manufacturer put Taiwanese components in a drone bought with EU loan money? The regulation says yes, within limits most coverage of the Chinese-component waiver never mentioned — and only for that one funding channel.
Sylvaine Li · Aug 4, 2026
Policy & Regulation
Three moves in one week — an executive order, a revised framework, and a candid interview — reveal a gap between what U.S. policy now demands and what U.S. industry can currently build. The Pentagon's own drone framework runs on two clocks: get China out now, become fully domestic later. Taiwan's opportunity lives in the space between them — real, urgent, and bounded
Sylvaine Li · Jul 30, 2026
Policy & Regulation
The Pentagon's Drone Dominance Program spells out exactly what a non-Chinese drone supply chain must look like, component by component, on a dated schedule. It was quietly revised on July 23. Here is what changed, and what it means for Taiwan.
Sylvaine Li · Jul 28, 2026
Policy & Regulation
Taiwan is now Ukraine's third-largest drone battery supplier, but new DSET research shows the dependency has just moved upstream, from cells to the Chinese-dominated materials inside them. Here's what the data shows and what it means as NATO, the Pentagon, and Kyiv all raise their non-Chinese demand.
Sylvaine Li · Jul 24, 2026
Policy & Regulation
Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen wants central funding for a drone corridor built on her city's existing cluster. Her own party's bill, now in joint committee review alongside three rivals after the July 3 referral, would cap how much production can concentrate in any one place. We break down the dispersal mandate, the KMT's confirmed NT$240 billion counter-proposal, and why Taiwan's own chip supply can't yet support a localization quota either way.
Sylvaine Li · Jul 10, 2026
Policy & Regulation
Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs has opened applications for its Drone Advanced Technology R&D and International Business Opportunity Acceleration Subsidy Program — the MOEA's most direct investment vehicle yet in the 2027 non-red supply chain push. Here's what the program does, how it scores applications, and what it means for system integrators and component suppliers.
Sylvaine Li · Jun 22, 2026
