A Taiwan-based civil society hackathon brought together teams to find ways of exposing censored information inside China and helping people there get around the Great Firewall, framed as useful for Taiwan and the free world, not against them.

• Taiwan Freedom Association ran a months-long workshop and hackathon series, ending in a demo day where teams presented tools and research.
• Projects included analyzing patterns in Chinese censorship rules and promoting circumvention browsers to help mainland users access blocked information.
• Organizers argue authoritarian states use troll armies, paid writers, and generative AI to flood foreign platforms with disinformation while blocking information flow at home, leaving democracies stuck playing defense.
• A Ukrainian researcher speaking at the event drew a parallel to Russia's long-running hybrid war against Ukraine, arguing freedom has to be actively defended rather than assumed.
• Organizers frame the effort as part of a broader push to build "mental defense" against information warfare, alongside Taiwan's civil defense resilience efforts.

Outlook: Organizers plan to keep developing measurement methods and tools from the hackathon, aiming for a lasting impact on information flow inside China rather than a one-off event.