On Monday Taiwan will do what no country has ever done on purpose: it will slow down its own internet. Not because of a fault, not because of an attack - but to see what happens to people when the connection weakens. It is an exercise, part of a ten-day military manoeuvre. And it is one of the most level-headed things anyone has done lately.

The same day the Taiwanese military simulated a defence against a Chinese amphibious landing on Penghu - an island closer to Taiwan itself than to the Chinese coast. Taiwanese strategists see it as the first target: take Penghu and you have a base for drones and missiles that puts the whole island within reach. That is not a conspiracy theory, it is geography.

The slowed internet is the harder test

The army can rehearse landings as much as it likes. If a citizen does not know how to make a call, how to pay, how to get information when the network is going down - no defence plan holds. So the authorities announced in advance what will not be affected: cash machines, traffic lights, emergency calls, landline telephony and fixed internet all stay outside the exercise.

So somebody sat down and made a list of what has to keep working even in the worst case. That is the difference between a state that prepares and a state that hopes.

The question that remains here

Taiwan rejects Chinese territorial claims and repeats that only the island's residents can decide their own future. That is a position that sounds familiar in the Balkans - a small entity, a large neighbour and a permanent question about who has the right to speak in whose name.

But what is worth stealing from Taiwan is not the rhetoric, it is the method. They test how a society functions when something basic breaks. Does anyone here even know what falls first when the network falls?