No need to go on the island to win. Just encircle it. A blockade. Always works and this has been the modus operandi to conquer fortresses and castles for millenia.
Time wouldn't be on their side though. China would need to effectively complete the invasion before the US navy had time to react. Even if it was considered unlikely the US would react, I doubt China would commit to an invasion they weren't certain they could win.
Not everything is for sale, especially at this ridiculous price. Why would you think the taiwanese people are so poor that they would all betray their country for 100k?
> the taiwanese people are so poor that they would all betray their country for 100k?
You'd be surprised. I'm not saying that all of them (or even most of them) will accept the payment, but there have been multiple cases of espionage committed by Taiwanese military personnel for extremely trifling amounts of monetary reward from the Chinese. Here's just one example: https://www.worldjournal.com/wj/story/121222/8572208
"According to the investigation by the police and prosecutors, Li Huixin's younger associate, surnamed Chen, was involved in lending money to military personnel in the Zhongshan District of Taipei City. In June 2023, Li traveled to Macau under the pretense of religious exchange and as the head of Ruixian Temple in Luzhou District, New Taipei City. From there, she went to mainland China and made contact with national security intelligence personnel. Upon returning to Taiwan, she used money to lure financially struggling military personnel.
Li and her associates required military personnel to submit their military identification cards for verification. Afterward, they were asked to wear uniforms and film surrender videos while holding the Chinese five-star flag, chanting slogans such as "Chinese people do not fight Chinese people, I oppose war." These videos were then transmitted via Telegram with a self-destruct feature. The group also stole official documents and provided information such as flight paths and military exercise schedules. Bribes were paid based on the confidentiality level of the data, and recruiting fellow soldiers could increase rewards.
The case involves active and retired military personnel with the surnames Zhang, Lin, Liu, Wu, Peng, Li, Yao, and two individuals surnamed Chen. The suspects come from various military branches, including the Army, Navy, and Military Police, spanning officers, non-commissioned officers, and enlisted soldiers. The highest-ranking officer involved was a lieutenant. Among them, only Liu received illicit gains amounting to NT$150,000 (approximately USD 4,500), while the others had not yet received any criminal proceeds."
There are two significant points to make about instances like this.
Finding someone who meets Criteria X is a long way from finding either a Majority or even just enough of a minority to make a difference.
When people believe their action will not make a difference, they pay less heed to the consequences of their actions. People will take money to do things if they don't think it will change much.
There are probably plenty of gun runners who sell guns to rebels that would should they succeed in their rebellion it would be detrimental to the gun-running business. Nevertheless they would happily sell them guns to them while they think the rebellion is doomed.
It's not always that simple though. Significant strategic decisions can involve projecting ineffectiveness to obtain the support of those who do not want you to be effective. Because of this, people have committed betrayals that have turned out to be far more significant than they imagined. I suspect this happens more often in fiction than real life, but fiction more frequently focuses on the significant. Real life produces the significant by having millions with the one in a million chance of being significant.
> When people believe their action will not make a difference, they pay less heed to the consequences of their actions. People will take money to do things if they don't think it will change much.
So in a completely hypothetical scenario, if the CCP surreptitiously offers 10,000USD (or pick any other amount you want) to each Taiwanese citizen who votes in favour of reunification, might we not potentially end up in a situation where >50% of Taiwanese voters accept the deal because each of them labours under the erroneous assumption that he or she is in the minority?
In another completely hypothetical scenario, if trump offers 10.000USD to each canadian citizen to vote to become the 51st US state, might we end up in a situation in which >50% canadians vote yes? Food for thought.
Would you subject your family to a Cultural Revolution in exchange for 100k? Add several zeros and assurances of safe passage out of the country and maybe you'd be onto something, but that's not going to happen for numerous reasons.
The PRC already buys the loyalty of who they can in Taiwan, but Taiwan nevertheless remains resolute.
I think the GP meant "a" cultural revolution, not "the" cultural revolution. But yes, the CCP taking over Taiwan would erode and then try to erase the beautiful and diverse culture of Taiwan. Schools will teach obedience to the CCP. History will be rewritten. Free media and foreign media will be censored. The entire set of democratic institutions of Taiwan will be dismantled. And you can go on and on.
I think this strategy could possible work with the US taking Greenland (although I think that plan has been abandoned) but there is no way that Taiwan would accept such a small amount.
A blockade takes time to have an effect and that time gives US Navy SSNs time to start sinking the PLAN (in righteous response to the PLAN attacking merchant ships approaching Taiwan.)
For the PRCs invasion of Taiwan to work with minimal risk of excessive losses, they need to do it very quickly so that it's a fait accompli, minimizing the chance of any American response at all.
Unfortunately energy security is not on Taiwan's side during a blockade. We only have one active nuclear energy plant here, a bit of wind and solar, but mostly imported coal and LNG. I think electricity rationing would happen more or less immediately.
Can we really be sure what the new 2025 version of the US would do in such a scenario? I highly doubt the new US is going to intervene in defence of any of its erstwhile allies.
A smart friend suggested it triggers most rational leaders to be extra-cautious and may have a net-zero or even favourable impact on global politcs. We will see...
Being unpredictable has advantages and also disadvantages, depending on setting.
Though with an AI race going on and Musk practically living in the White House, I can't imagine the US would let China have Taiwan without a fight right now.
Also, forcing TSMC to build a number of modern fabs in the US is sort of a warning to China to stay away AT LEAST until those fabs are done. If China attacks right now,I think we would see the full might of the US forces coming to their defense.
AI right now has the same role as nukes had during the cold war. Nobody really knows how quickly it will develop, and many scenarios would allow those who get it first to take out all enemy nukes without much risk of receiving a retaliatory strike.
For instance, AI may make it possible to build a virtually perfect missile defense against ICBMS, it may may allow perfect tracking of subs and other submarine threats, it may power drone swarms capabable of disabling any integrated air defense network, and even to destroy all enemy missile siles and nuclear subs whil minimizing loss of life.
The US is not going to let China get there first, if they can stop it.
> AI may make it possible to build a virtually perfect missile defense against ICBMS
Massed ICBM defense is a matter of sheer volume - with the current GMD system the US can throw enough exoatmospheric kill vehicles (and THAAD to handle the leftovers) to counter a handful of re-entry vehicles from a smaller nuclear power like North Korea or Iran. Not hundreds (vs China) or thousands (vs Russia) that you would see in a peer-level nuclear exchange where everyone has multi-megaton MIRVs, decoys, and SLBMs with much shorter flight times.
Some fantasy future AI with the right sensors may perfectly track all of that sub-orbital mayhem. Without an enormous fleet of thousands of kill vehicles to actually defend against that threat, and the logistics to keep that fleet operational, it can do nothing about it. Building and supporting that sort of strategic defense is obscenely expensive, and as such it remains a Reagan-era fever dream.
Things have changes since the Raegan era. There are a couple of elements to ICMB defense:
1) If you can strike the the ICBM's before the MIRV's separate, you only need a fraction of the number. To do this, you need to already have the interceptors (or whatever else used to shot them down) in orbit before the ICBM's launch.
Independently of AI, Starship is making it much cheaper to place objects in orbit, and can help with this. (Though it could trigger a first strike if detected, it might be possible to hide interceptors within Starlink satellites, for instance.)
2) Coordination and precision. This is what wasn't in place at all in the 80s. I'm old enough to remember when this was going on, and labelled impossible. I still remember thinking, back then: "This is impossible now, but will not remain impossible forever".
Whether it applies to interceptors already placed in orbit, novel weapons such as lasers, typically also placed in orbit or interceptors intended to stop reentry vehicles one faces a coordination problem with time restrictions that makes it very hard for humans or even traditional computer algorithms to solve properly.
This, more than the volume, was the fundamental showstopper in the 80s (the willingness to pay was pretty significant).
Now, with AI tech, plenty of known options open up, and an unknown number of things we didn't think of yet, could also open up.
Accuracy and coordination is the most fundamental one. Here AI may help distribute the compute load into satellites and even independent interceptor vehicles. (Both by making them more autonomous and by improving algorithms or control systems for the dumber ones.)
But beyond that, AI may (if one side achievs a significant lead) also a path to making manufacturing large numbers much cheaper, meaning one could much more easily scale up enough volume to match whatever volume the enemy can deploy. Also, with more advanced tech (allowed by ASI), interceptors can potentially be made much smaller. Even a pebble sized chunk of metal can stop most rockets, given the velocities in space. The hard part is to make them hit the target.
Basically, what I'm saying is that whoever has ASI first may at minimum get a time window of technological superiority where the opponent's ICBM's may be rendered more or less obsolete.
In fact, I think the development of the Poseidon by Russia was a response to realizing decades ago that ICBM's would eventually be counterable.
However, AI tech will possibly even more suitable for detecting and countering this kind of stealthy threats. Just like it is currently revolutionizing radiology, it will be able to find patterns in data from sonars, radars, satellites etc that humans and traditional algorithms have little chance to detect in time.
He has been predictable in his handling of Ukraine and Israel. He favours the aggressors. He's also predictable in isolationism and wanting manufacturing moved back to America. None of this bodes well for Taiwan.
Hamas is the aggressor in the most recent war. They invaded Israel on Oct 7 2023 and killed 1200 people. If you adjust this for population that would be like Mexico invading the US and killing 41,000 people.
Israel has killed more than 50,000 Palestinians in Gaza.
If you adjust for population, that's like Mexico bombing nearly every building in the US and killing 8 million people.
Hamas is the aggressor only in a very immediate sense. Israel holds millions of Palestinians under military occupation, steals more and more of their land over time, and kills Palestinians all the time. From January 1st through October 7th 2023, when there was no war going on, Israel killed 234 Palestinians in the West Bank. That's just business as usual for Israel.
Not quite. He favours isolationism. It's just that Israel is an exception because many Americans (especially religious right wingers) view it akin to a 51st US state.
>What was Putin’s intention in the war? I can tell you what his intention was. It was to force Zelensky to negotiate neutrality. And that happened within seven days of the start of the invasion. You should understand this, not the propaganda that’s written about this.
>Oh, that they failed and he was going to take over Ukraine. Come on, ladies and gentlemen. Understand something basic. The idea was to keep NATO. And what is NATO?
>It’s the United States off of Russia’s border. No more, no less. I should add one very important point. Why are they so interested? First, because if China or Russia decided to have a military base on the Rio Grande or in the Canadian border, not only would the United States freak out, we’d have war within about ten minutes.
>In 2022, Sachs appeared several times on one of the top-rated shows funded by the Russian government, hosted by Vladimir Solovyov, to call for Ukraine to negotiate and step away from its "maximalist demands" of removing Russia from Ukrainian territory.
>Sachs has suggested that the U.S. was responsible for the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline. In February 2023, he was invited by the Russian government to address the United Nations Security Council about the topic.
Putin acts pretty rationally, just with flawed information. "Launching a full-scale invasion on the capital with the intention of negotiating neutrality" is a crazy plan he would never come up with. That's like beating someone up to get them to like you. The initial goal of the invasion was clearly to remove the democratically elected leadership of Ukraine, and then either incorporate it into Russia or (more likely) to install a puppet government that's more favorable of Russia.
On day 7, the three-day military excursion to Kyiv had stalled, the Russian army was scrambling to establish supply routes and figure out logistics for a war that should have been over, and Putin was trying to convert a stalemate into something he could call a success. Nobody at the time would have claimed that his behavior on day 7 was reflective of his plans on day 1, when days 3-7 were clearly not going his way.
I don't know, may be Russia see NATO + US as a much bigger threat than how NATO see Russia as a threat. Or may be NATO have some other ways of dealing with this threat.
> may be Russia see NATO + US as a much bigger threat than how NATO see Russia as a threat
Or maybe Russia see eastern and central Europe as their sphere of influence, which they lost. And now they're using any excuse to try to re-establish that.
What kind of NATO danger did they expect from Georgia?
Russia had zero reason to see de-militarised Europe as a threat.
I don't know, may be Russia see NATO + US as a much bigger threat than how NATO see Russia as a threat.
That's certainly true now, even if it wasn't true before. So why would Putin act in a way that was absolutely guaranteed -- win, lose or draw -- to fortify and entrench NATO's presence on Russia's borders?
His NATO excuse never made any sense. Don't invade anybody, and you have nothing to fear from NATO.
>It was to force Zelensky to negotiate neutrality.
Umm, no. Bullshit. That's my response. It's the 3rd time in a decade Putin pulled this off. Let's not pretend this is anything about NATO obligations. He wants to take back land he feels was always his (aka the most common reason for war)
Liars going to lie, ehh? No, the reason for this milirarny operatia was to exterminate Ukrainian nation, erase it from the history. Destroy and disperse it. There is enough proof for this, starting with the Putin's manifest about non existence of Ukrainians.
The only reason why Russia is so much against NATO is the article 5, because it makes attacking peaceful nations expensive and risky for Russia.
I'm not going to bat for Trump – I don't like the guy – but this seems provably false just based on the fact that Trump has already applied tariffs to Chinese imports. Not only that, he's ratcheting up those tariffs because Beijing has so far refused to come to the table. He seems to be continuing his 2016 policy of economically antagonizing the Chinese.
What unpredictable things has Trump's administration done regarding states that were considered the US's adversaries before his administration took over?
