 G'day mate, 40 here and every time I try to sit down to broadcast some more truths, the regimes and waves coming after me, all I want to do is share my feelings and tell my story but they're trying to shut me down guys so I'm listening to an excellent New Yorker article, A Dangerous Game Over Taiwan, written by Dexter Filkins who wrote a book on the Iraq invasion, I think called The Forever War. He gave me an interview for lukeboard.net about 20 years ago. He was also a friend of a or an acquaintance of Yoshi Obayashi, a stand-up comic who's appeared on my show several times. So here's a good little bit from this excerpt from this in 2013 Chinese construction crews arrived at a soul in the South China Sea known as mischief reef. It was a speck in the ocean, so shallow that at high tide it disappeared below the water. But that didn't last. Okay, mischief reef. So let's say there's a dispute between United States and China of a mischief reef or a dispute between any two nations. How powerful is international law? How effective is international law going to be at resolving these disputes? And international law is only as effective as the nations that agree to enforce it. International law in and of itself doesn't command any armies. So US and China have a conflict of a mischief reef. And is international law going to solve that? What if China is violating international law? God forbid. We're all locked in an iron cage together and that was coming to rescue us. The Chinese crews began piling sand atop the reef and eventually poured acres of concrete to build it into an island, attempting to create a new political entity in one of the world's busiest shipping corridors on the southern approach to Taiwan. Mischief Reef was also claimed by the Philippines, which sued China in the International Court of Arbitration. But the Chinese crews carried on, even firing water cannon. Whoa! So the Chinese crews carried on even firing water cannon, guys. Water cannon. That's how serious it got. So you think this could just be resolved by going to the world court? Right? The Philippines sued China. Let me give you some guesses how this is going to work out. So Robert Wright does that weekly show with Mickey Cowell's author of many books. He wants the US to be more observant of international law and then hopes that that will have an effect on other nations because maybe if the US observes international law that when the US condemns other nations by violating international law maybe they'll have more effect. Well it may have more rhetorical effect but it's not really going to change facts on the ground. Fact is we're all locked in an iron cage together. No one is coming to rescue us and there's no international arbitrator who has the force of armies behind him unless particular armies decide to give him that power. Right? The Philippines sued China. It goes to the world court. How's this going to work out? And set Filipino boats sailing to a nearby reef. Within a few years they had built a runway and brought in radar and anti-aircraft missiles along with troops to man them. Over time two more artificial islands were fully militarized. Okay, that sounds very naughty. Now China's been very naughty by creating artificial islands in the South China Sea and so do you think international law is going to deter them? The only thing that's going to deter them is overwhelming economic or military force. Circumstances. Now different nations may join together and use the pretext of China's violations of international law to take action. But then international law is just going to be a pretext. It's not going to be the determining factor. How do you think this is going to work out? The construction was part of a long running effort to claim jurisdiction in the South China Sea. So who do you think gets to effectively claim jurisdiction in the South China Sea? I'll give you a guess. It's going to be the entity that is able to enforce its jurisdiction. Does Israel have a right to exist? Nobody has a right to exist. You have to seize and defend your right to exist. Otherwise there's no inherent right to exist. USA, USA. If the US is stronger then it will get its way. If China is stronger than China will get its way. International law won't really shade this dispute. Let me know if the wind becomes way too obnoxious. Going back to this New Yorker article, a dangerous game over Taiwan. Is rich in fishing beds and oil deposits? For decades China's government has been declaring that tiny spits of land in the sea are in fact islands, entitled to territorial waters that extend out for miles. The Chinese have made more than 200 such claims, giving them jurisdiction over international waters and making it increasingly difficult for other nations to operate. In 2016 the International Court of Arbitration ruled that the claims had no validity. The Chinese government ignored the ruling, which the vice foreign minister dismissed as... Okay, so China's just dismissing these international rules. Not very sad. Alright, China's not being... China's not being real respectful of international law here. So I'm going to try to shelter my cheap Oppo phone away from the wind so that we can have a comfy and cozy intimate discussion here about the power of international law. So if China establishes facts on the ground, then it's only going to be other facts that have greater force than China's facts that will determine what's going to happen in the South China Sea and in life in general. You just can't lie upon the law unless you know who's going to enforce the law. There are also laws that the Black Lives Matter protest violated and they largely got away with it because they were doing their demonstrations in Democratic Party controlled jurisdictions. And so the laws on the books didn't really matter because they depended upon individuals to enforce them. That's why there could never be purely neutral law because all law requires individuals to enforce it. On September 1st, 2021, China declared that any foreign vessel sailing in the territorial waters of the reclaimed reefs and shoals would be required to identify itself. So many men say, oh marriage is just a scrap of paper. Well it's a scrap of paper and carries with it communal sanction. So if the community doesn't enforce the sacred or special status of marriage, then that scrap of paper by itself is not going to enforce anything. So just a scrap of paper on its own whether it's international law or a marriage document, then it's not going to enforce anything. It depends upon a community sanction. It depends upon people putting effort and power and sanction behind the paper. The US refused. As a former senior naval officer told me, we made it absolutely clear that we weren't going to abide by that. A week later, an American destroyer called the USS Benfold sailed past Mischief Reef without providing identification. Chinese forces went on high alert and the People's Liberation Army declared the ship's presence the latest ironclad proof of attempt US hegemony and militarization of the South China. So China created facts on the ground, then dictated how everyone else was to conduct themselves and the United States just ignored China's directions because the United States is in a more powerful economic and military position. They can afford to ignore China's directions. The US Navy said that the mission was intended to demonstrate that the United States will fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows. As China stepped up its claims in the Pacific, Western leaders responded. In September of 2021 alone, the US Navy sent aircraft carriers, destroyers and other warships into the waters around Taiwan or the South China Sea at least six times. The British at least twice. The next month, ships from the US, the U. So as the individual becomes more aggressive and as China becomes more aggressive or any group becomes more aggressive, there are always reactions. So this is first stage thinking to think that you can just establish facts on the ground and there won't be any reaction. So a lot of liberal left public policies are based on this type of thinking, stage one thinking that okay, now we're going to increase marginal tax rates say from 25% to 75%. And then we'll bring in three times as much money, but it doesn't work that way. People respond to incentives. First stage, you increase marginal tax rates. Second stage, people react to those incentives and adjust themselves accordingly. So you become aggressive like China, other nations are increasingly incentivized to bend together to oppose you. And that's what's happening. K, Canada, New Zealand and Japan gathered in the Philippine Sea for a sprawling multinational naval exercise, one of the largest since the end of the Cold War. So China has almost no allies. China is surrounded by countries that loathe. The United States has very powerful alliances. So having an alliance often comes with a price. Alliances are not cost free. Human connections come with a price. To bond with people, it always produces an ethic. You have to modify yourself, your behavior, restrict yourself if you're going to maintain relationships. But if you can maintain bonds with other people you're going to be in a much more powerful position at work, in your love life, in your personal life, in your international life. So China has virtually no allies who count. The United States is very strong alliances. This year, the US has sent warships into the Taiwan Strait or the South China Sea 17 times and has routinely sent aircraft to patrol there. The naval activity has sometimes been so intense that each side appeared to be reacting to the other. A former senior American naval officer insisted that this wasn't the case as the Navy planned each mission weeks in advance. I think they are reacting to us, he said. Okay, we're always reacting to each other, but it's the stronger party who dominates interaction. So the higher you are in status, the less likely you are to pay attention to the behaviors and words of people lower in status. Stronger your country or your business, the less you have to pay attention to the actions of other parties. Now, the Biden administration with regard to Ukraine only wanted to give them defensive weapons, but that doesn't really matter very much. Defensive weapons still count as weapons because it means you're more protected, which means the offensive party, which in this case is Russia, has to go to greater lengths to overcome you. So whether the US arms Ukraine with purely defensive or even offensive weapons, it doesn't really matter that much. If the United States had never armed Ukraine with any weapons, Russia would likely have never invaded. If NATO had not made Ukraine a de facto member of NATO, Russia would never have needed to invade. So many of these chibolas, many of these troops are robes that you hear all the time in the news media. They're just nonsense. Whenever Americans have appeared, a Chinese vessel or aircraft has invariably come to shadow them. Occasionally the encounters have been humorous. In 2015 a US Navy reconnaissance plane was patrolling the South China Sea when it received a radio message. This is the Chinese Navy, a voice said in heavily accented English. Please go away quickly in order to wrong judgment. An American officer gave a carefully parsed response. I am a United States military aircraft conducting lawful military activities outside national airspace. The voice over the radio replied, meow. It was followed by a heart g'day mate. Got a lively bunch in the chat here. So one advantage that the United States has is that we speak English here. So English is now the international language. So when you hear Chinese speakers of English who are not native to the English language, it's really stilted and awkward. If you don't learn a language by the time you're about 7 or 8, 9, 10, 11 at the oldest, you'll always sound very awkward and stilted. So it helps that the United States speaks English. English is the language of the powerful, it's the dominant language in the world. Now on the other hand, don't want every other nation to speak English because every form of language carries with it the possibility of the transmittal of defective or dangerous ideas. You can only really maintain your own culture if you maintain your language. English is the lingua franca. It's the language of the internet. It's the language of the rich and the powerful. And it gives the United States a big advantage over places like China and Japan. Series of mysterious beeps. The sound of space invaders. A 1970s video game. In 2020, the Chinese military issued a harsher provocation. A propaganda video in which nuclear capable H6K jets carried out simulated missile attacks. So propaganda is a form of soft power. And soft power doesn't really count for much. What dominates the world is hard power. You can have all the soft power you want. In the end the world is run by hard power. Hard power is economic power. Hard power is military power. It's the hard power that dominates. United States is not going to be frightened by Chinese propaganda videos. We're outside the Crown Royal Casino here in Sydney. We're just south of Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Sydney Opera House. China can come forward with all this propaganda videos. It doesn't really matter much. And we can do Voice of America. We can beam that into China. But that's not going to change the fundamental dynamics of power. It's going to come down to hard power. Now, if you're a spiritual person you've got the teachings of the Bible. It says, you know, not by might, not by power, but by, you know, by will and law. It's a useful technique for people who are kind of discouraged by the real world. In the video which the PLA titled The God of War H6K goes on the attack, the war planes strike what appears to be Guam, the home of Anderson Air Force Base, one of a handful of major US bases in the Pacific. So if the US and China go to war over Taiwan, China will probably hit US military bases in Guam, also US military bases in Japan and in San Diego and in Darwin, Australia. So the United States has been pouring more resources into Australia, part of its pivot to the Pacific. We've got more Marines in Darwin. We've got more resources in Darwin. So Australia very likely to get hit if the US and China go to war over Taiwan. One of the prices of partnership and alliances. The ground erupts. A block of waterfront warehouses bursts into a fireball and then a column of smoke rises toward the planes. American observers responded bluffly to the simulation. We could have killed them six times. A US military officer told me. Still, China's belligerence reflected how the balance of military power had shifted since the late 90s. When the two. So you never really know what happens when you go to war. So you may feel very confident that you can kill them six times. But war always brings with it some nasty surprises. Also in a battle over Taiwan Taiwan's right next door to China. It's thousands and thousands of miles away from the United States. So it's a lot easier to fight when you're at home rather than abroad. So who's that great 19th century military strategist? Klausowitz. Klausowitz said you need three times as many forces to successfully invade at a minimum as opposed to defend. Two countries got into a dispute over Taiwan and China was forced to give way. It began in 1995 when President Li Donghui sought a visa to the US to deliver a speech at Cornell. So why was China forced to give way? Because it was weak and militarily and economically. So this is how the world works. The strong take what they want, the weak endure what they must. So that's why I think it's better to be strong than to be weak. The Clinton administration at first refused. But after an uproar in Congress, it agreed to grant him one. He was there. Enraged by what he regarded as Li's show of independence, missile tests near the island and instructed the PLA to stage military exercises. One of which mimicked an amphibious assault. President Clinton responded by sending a marine landing ship and two other warships into the Taiwan Strait. Followed a week later. Right. Why would anyone not want to see China contained? An ever growing stronger China is good for anyone with whom I can identify. I mean anyone I know. Like I can understand why China wants to get stronger. But I don't see how that's good for anyone else, including Vietnam, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Australia, Philippines, United States. I don't see how any of these nations are better off with a stronger China. So when it comes to war, it doesn't really matter much if your opponent is a democracy or a dictatorship. When democracies do not wage war, they don't have to deal with it. They don't have to deal with it. They don't have to deal with it. Democracies do not wage war in any more humane fashion than dictatorships. To the extent there is evidence they're even less humane because you're usually dealing with an aroused populace who feels righteous about venting all their might on evil. So with a democracy that goes to war, it's going to be sold in terms of good versus evil, which is exactly what we have in the war over Ukraine. It's being sold to us by the media and by our elites as good versus evil. Therefore, there's a lot less room to compromise when you've moralized conflict. That's why democracies are even more likely to be absolutely brutal in waging war than authoritarian and dictatorial regimes. But if you're going up against a dictatorship or an authoritarian regime, it doesn't really matter. You're not more or less likely to win. Your opponent is not more or less likely to be formidable if they're a dictatorship or a democracy. And the spread of democracy does not reduce conflict in the world. There's little evidence of that. So I'm just trying to have a peaceful show here and the liberal hegemonists keep sending these ways to interrupt my flow, man. This time, Clinton responded with even greater force, sending two aircraft carrier battle groups into the waters near Taiwan. Amid the crisis, thousands of Taiwanese requested visas to flee the island and the stock market plummeted. But Jiang backed down again. So that was the major reason why Zelensky, the head of Ukraine didn't want to more aggressively prepare for a Russian invasion because he could do a tank the stock market. So it's not just Donald Trump who has a preoccupation with the stock market. So too, Great Britain in World War II. If they had prepared more aggressively, spent more money preparing, they would have crashed their economy. So Great Britain prepared just about as well as they possibly could have for World War II because you don't want to do gratuitous harm for your economy because your economy powers your military. You can't just trash your economy to further your military. You have to weigh up both of these goods. You want to maintain an economy along with an elite military because if you crash the economy, your military is going to suffer. So Great Britain in 1937, 38, 39 were preparing for war with Germany. Prime Minister Chamberlain waved a piece of paper saying, you know, a piece in our time. But he didn't stop preparing for war. He did absolutely everything he could to prepare for war. There's a good argument that by reaching temporary accommodations with Hitler, that Great Britain got to be more prepared for war in 1939. The Prime Minister of Great Britain at the time delayed the onset of war for about a year which may well have been more in Great Britain's interests than in Germany's interests. And so Chamberlain and Great Britain were doing everything they could to prepare for war with Germany even though they had this piece of paper and you wave it and you say, oh, you know, we've got a piece in our time. Yeah, they had a piece in our time and they were preparing for war. And Zelensky didn't want to talk about a war with Russia. He was afraid that that would provoke his powerful neighbour. But he had very smart people in his armed forces doing absolutely everything they could to prepare for war with Russia. And they wouldn't even tell the United States what their plans were. They kept their war plans hidden or likelihood from both Zelensky, the Prime Minister, from the United States, from other countries, from the parliament. They kept their plans hidden. And the number one plan was they were willing to surrender territory and then hope that Russia would outstrip its logistics and then they'd be able to pick off the Russians, which is exactly what they did and it turned out to be very effective. The Chinese were humiliated. A former senior official in the Clinton administration told me they vowed never again. Since then, China has undertaken an ambitious military buildup that has brought conventional forces to near parity with the United States. So there's actually very little difference in Churchill's attitudes towards the Nazis and Chamberlains. Like during the 1930s, they were about on the same page. Okay, so for tactical reasons Chamberlain flew to Europe and reached an accommodation with Hitler and gave up Czechoslovakia and waved a piece of paper saying we have enough time. But in terms of the policies they supported and the rhetoric that they used to describe Nazi Germany, there's virtually no difference between Chamberlain and Winston Churchill. And yeah, for a time, Churchill wanted to use Hitler to eliminate Soviet Union, but once it all depends on situation, right? Once Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, then Soviet Union became the dearest friend. Churchill said like I'd make a deal with the devil to fight against our biggest enemy at the time, which is Germany. So no permanent friends, no permanent allies, no permanent enemies in the world are only ever shifting interests. And so your interests may dictate that country A is your enemy one day and your ally the next. The Chinese Navy is now the largest in the world and as the US Navy prepares to decommission more of its own ships. Okay, it doesn't really matter that China's Navy is the largest in the world. What matters is how effective they are. Numbers I know in the promiscuity world have a friend who says that the numbers of women that you sleep with takes on a quality all of its own. But when it comes to a Navy, the largest number of vessels doesn't really matter much. The Chinese Navy is weak, it can be shredded overnight and a variant little of the Chinese Navy can fight effectively say more than 500 miles offshore. That means that a couple of destroyers in the Indian Ocean can shut off imports and exports from China. China has to import almost all its energy. A couple of destroyers in the Indian Ocean can just shut off China's energy imports and within a year 500 million Chinese would starve. China has two old French aircraft carriers and the rest of the stuff is made in China. What Chinese goods do you most associate with quality? I can't really think of any Chinese goods that I associate with quality. This is from the New Yorker, a dangerous game over Taiwan. The gap is expected to grow. China's ships and submarines are widely regarded as less effective than their American equivalents, but the Chinese are rapidly modernizing. China's growing capability... Yeah, China does have nuclear weapons, so we certainly can't treat them with gratuitous content. The ladies have coincided with an increasingly aggressive approach to foreign policy. For years, it's... So why is China being increasingly aggressive with foreign policy? Because it can, because it's economy and military is growing stronger. Also, it's hitting into more desperate territory. I guess run into severe economic headwinds in the last few years. It has astronomical levels of debt. It's going through a dramatic demographic crisis. All these crises are hitting at once. So China is in a vulnerable position, kind of similar to Germany before World War I. So if Germany had launched its attacks against France and the rest of Europe in 1900, Germany would have won World War I. This has the stomach for hundreds of millions of dead Asians, but not for thousands of dead American boys with names like probably Lee and Leroy Jones. Yeah. So China has more capacity for suffering. China can lose millions of people and it's not such a big deal. United States loses hundreds of people. It's a very big deal. We put a higher value of life in the West. It's a dangerous game over Taiwan. Dexter Filkin's writing here. Leaders seldom boast it of their country's military prowess. Following the dictum of the former leader Deng Xiaoping to hide your strength, bide your time as the economy grew. You don't understand the disdain for China. Why would anyone venerate China? I mean, they have behaved like a bad actor in international relations. They steal technology. They try to bribe other politicians and nations. Almost no nation has a natural incentive to revere China or to ally with China. China behaved badly. China has given us almost every major pandemic. You think COVID was bad? China also gave us the Spanish flu in 1919. China has given us every major pandemic over the past 100 years. They have not conducted themselves in ways that cause disinterested people to respect or revere them. China has virtually no friends in the world. Becoming the head of the CCP in 2013, Xi Jinping has abandoned that precept. He set no deadline for bringing Taiwan into China, but suggested that he intended to be in office when it happened. The Taiwan question he said cannot be passed from generation to generation. Last year, in a speech commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Communist Party, he warned the Chinese people will never allow any foreign forces to bully, coerce, and enslave us. Whoever attempts to do it will surely break their heads on the steel great wall built with the blood and flesh of 1.4 billion Chinese people. Very scary rhetoric. Wow. Who could stand up to that? Xi's re-election as party chairman in October appeared to herald a new era of assertiveness. He emerged from the party congress, held in the great hall of the people in Beijing, stronger than ever. He purged his main rivals in the Politburo and its standing committee. Many of them market-oriented technocrats and elevated loyalists. Most of them drawn from them. It's kind of funny that President Xi is stronger than ever because he hasn't really done anything right for years. Everything he's done has been an absolute disaster from zero COVID to a crashing economy, demographic collapse, completely alienated other nations in the world. He's intimidated people from telling him the truth. China's increasingly badly governed and they've got a dictator with more power than anyone since Mao, maybe even more power than Mao had. The military. Four-hour vacation streams. Let's go. Let's party, guys. Security establishment in one highly visible moment, Xi looked on as his aging predecessor, Hu Jintao, was roughly escorted from the stage. Several of Hu's allies most of them relative moderates were soon expelled from the party. In his speech to the party congress, Xi So there's such a thing as too much power. Like I've had bosses who are a-holes. When you have a boss who's an a-hole, you're kind of more reluctant to give them information that they're not going to deal well with. You're not going to give them the benefit of the doubt. So you can get too much power over people. You can scare people too much. And so they simply abstain from giving you the information that you need. Great thing about capitalism and a free market is that it's constantly relaying information. The prices are information. If you get a free market in goods or free market in ideas, then you have much better access to information than if you're a dictator whereby people are afraid to tell you the truth. Which seems to be the situation in both Soviet Union and China, but it seems to be even worse with China. Xi will be dealt with in a palace coup that may very well level the palace through to the basement. Yeah. He's warned of dangerous storms ahead and ordered leaders to prepare for an era of struggle, a word that was edited into the party's charter in seven places. Phrases that suggested stability. Alright, struggle, that indicates that things are really tough for us right now. If you ask a mate how you're doing, he says, I'm struggling, right? In all likelihood, these things aren't going very well. And things are not going well for China. Like peace and development will remain the themes of the era. We're removed from a report accompanying the speech. Our country has entered a period when strategic opportunity coexists with risks and challenges. Xi told the party's leaders. The world has entered a period of turbulence and transformation. How does he really know what's going on in the war, given that he's executed anyone who's brought in news he didn't want to hear? Think about how distorted his information is. Western experts say that Xi's ultimate ambition is for China to supplant the United States as the world's preeminent power. His goal is what he calls China's great rejuvenation. The recovery of national power, pride and territory that fell away in the 19th century, with much of it surrendered to the west. Making Taiwan part of China, she has said. So in the 19th century, during the Opium Wars with Great Britain, China had the most powerful, the biggest military in the world, and the biggest GNP in the world. Great Britain could just send a few boats over to China and crush it wide, because China had to spend much of its military just maintaining internal order. Like the United States does not need to use its military to maintain internal order. China still has to use much of its military to maintain internal order. Also, size of GNP, that doesn't really measure much. GNP is a really shoddy way for measuring economic growth. So much of China's GNP goes towards building cities that nobody lives in. It's a lot of nonsense building. It's the equivalent of creating a hole and then filling it back up. What you want to know is how much bang for the buck can you get? And China is saddled with debt. So I've been talking about China's economic problems for about four years on this live stream. And when I started doing it on a regular basis, people said, you know, China's going to be the next great power. It's not a trajectory to overcome the US. It hasn't already overcome the US. Nobody talks that way anymore. It's very clear that China is not on a trajectory to overcome the United States right now and become the world's next great superpower. In all that war China will lose control over provinces. China will retract its own footprint as their time again in history expands to about the size it is now retracts. Yeah. And so Peter Zion says he doesn't expect that there will be a China as we know it now in a decade. Xi took what took decades to build and he's burning it down. But Peter Zion doesn't expect that there will be a new version of the iPhone because Apple has invested almost all its manufacturing in China. And China's falling apart like with zero COVID policies. Manufacturing in China has been absolutely pushed. Chinese COVID vaccines don't work. So if they don't have zero COVID policies, draconian stay-at-home orders, then millions of people will die from COVID because their vaccines don't work. Is one of his project's crucial chapters? For many... Yeah, Apple is trying to use Indian factories increasingly as a hedge against the collapse of their manufacturing base in China. Xi is the best thing to ever happen to the West. Yeah. He is so threatened and intimidated and murdered people who are bringing bad news that Xi is getting really faulty information. China specialists in the West the speech was a watershed. There are no longer any checks on Xi's power within the system. Matt Pottinger who served as Deputy National Security Advisor under President Donald Trump and is now a visiting fellow at the Hoop. So if there are no checks on my power, I do a lot of really stupid things. I would indulge my whims. Anyone with unchecked power is very dangerous to their society and to themselves. Hoover Institution told me any checks that now exist are external to China. Inside the system, she can do what he wants, including starting a war. Several times a year, David Aukmanek, a former Pentagon official who is now at the Rand Corporation in Washington, assembles Navy and Air Force officers and officials to conduct war games between the US and China over Taiwan. The participants gather around a large map showing forces arrayed across the region. Those playing the Chinese leaders are steeped in knowledge of China's decision making. All have access to the US government's best information. The war games are so real. I don't think they have access to the US's best information. So it said earlier in this article that there's no country that we talk to more that we are more closely entwined with than Taiwan. We just don't talk about that publicly. But the US is deeply entwined with Taiwan. Joe Biden has repeatedly said that the US will go to war to defend. Bloody hell! Just trying to do a podcast here. And here come the ways that they're waging war against my cheap OPPO Aussie phone. Bloody hell. Bill, that the participants are exhausted and stressed out. They take them very seriously. Aukmanek told me. The simulations take many forms but usually start with a crisis. Like the election of a pro-independence president of Taiwan. Or with an outright invasion. Many of them end badly for the United States. Aukmanek. Brandon says once the United States builds chip factories in the US they will dispense with Taiwan. No. If the US abandons Taiwan that will signal to its other allies like Korea and Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines that making an alliance with the United States is not a good bet because the US is fickle. So to maintain its alliance, particularly with Japan and with Australia, Philippines, Vietnam, Korea to maintain this anti-China alliance system the US has to defend Taiwan. If the US surrenders Taiwan, China will expand outward in power start threatening more and more of the South nations in the South China Sea. Start threatening Japan. The US will still care about Taiwan even if they didn't get any important computer chips from Taiwan for strategic reasons because the other allies in this anti-China coalition will lose faith in the US and start siding more with China. Sometimes the Chinese military is able to keep the US Navy at bay and capture Taiwan. Sometimes the Chinese sink US aircraft carriers. This puts the burden on the participants who are mimicking American officials. Do they give up or escalate? Do they strike China itself? Sometimes when the US attacks the Chinese mainland, the Chinese attack Alaska and Hawaii, he said. The losses are very heavy. It's not always so dire, Ochmanchek said. In some cases the United States prevails and even the games that the US loses are not necessarily reflective of how a war would unfold in them. China cannot maintain the large number of secured deep water ports. I think you're exaggerating cheese limited knowledge and disciplinary measures. I'm sure he has many trusted sources and people who report accurately information for his use. Maybe obviously I'm not China expert. I'm just a bloke who reads the news and reads books and reads academic papers and listens to a lot of podcasts and has a lot of spare time to pursue his interests. But I just enjoy the challenge of trying to match my thinking with reality and seeing how well I do. So this is Dexter Filkins in The New Yorker. Like the war games, almost everything about a potential war with China over Taiwan is theoretical. For the Americans and the Taiwanese, gauging weather and how a war might start involved... So I started playing games like card games, games like risk down 1979 and then I started inventing my own games for how to be like president of the United States and how to deal with digital inflation, double digit unemployment, skyrocketing budget deficits all these multiple problems. And so I designed my own strategy games. I've loved strategies since I was a kid around I think by age 8 or 9 I could name every single king and queen of England. I've always loved English histories. I think the English love their history more than any other nation. So I've always loved strategy. I've always loved putting my mind up against reality. I learned my foreign policy from risk. No, but I love... That's I think the first game I played about war and international relations. I remember I'd get so angry when somebody would attack me. I remember you'd have those brutal, brutal battles just to the death. And once they start attacking you to conquer your land, even if you won and survived you'd be so weak. Luke Ford only does peer-reviewed policy, bro. That's right. Back to the New Yorker article from Mr. Filkins. The dangerous king. For American policymakers, that means trying to determine what is required to dissuade China from attempting to change the status quo by force. Or if it does, how to make any war so painful that China would stop without achieving its goals. Well it should be pretty easy to stop China's ability to import petroleum and other forms of energy. And without that China starts within a year. Can Taiwanese experts agree that an invasion of Taiwan would be a colossal gamble for the Chinese leadership? Well I can't help reminiscing right now to that heady time about two minutes ago when I had 11 live viewers. I mean I'm not letting it go to my head. But I mean do you remember that exciting time that we shared about two minutes ago when we had 11 live viewers? I mean people were just walking in here. I mean the power that we wielded then. Those were the days. A full scale invasion would likely begin with cyber and missile attacks on Taiwanese military infrastructure. And possibly with an assault by airborne troops. But eventually an invading force of tens or possibly hundreds of thousands of soldiers would have to cross 100 miles of water, capture the island's difficult terrain, and sustain an occupation. Probably while under constant attack. In testimony before Congress last year Admiral Phil Davidson, then the commander of the Indo-Pacific Command, expressed concern that China could try to take Taiwan before 2027. The year its military modernism 40. Is this the peer reviewed Taiwan invasion bro? So I'm sitting here on these very hard rocks. I've been sitting here for 48 minutes on this live stream trying to shelter out of the wind. Trying to give you the high quality audio. Trying to try to drop paratroopers that claim to be shot out of the sky while still over water. Says the chat. So I've got my sunglasses just hanging out there. I can't seem to read the chat when I've got sunglasses on. I'm just sitting here by the dock of the bay doing some live streaming before I resume my walk about South of Sydney Harbour Bridge, back to the New Yorker. Session is scheduled to be complete. I think our conventional deterrent is actually eroding, he said. I worry that they are accelerating their ambitions to supplant the United States and our leadership role in the rules-based international order, which they have long said that they want to do by 2050. Okay, the rules-based international order. Alright, it's something to that. If you can get on the same page with other people, that's a good thing. Uh oh, here comes the wind. So I'm going to switch the location of my upper device for that high quality audio that you expect from me. Come on guys, once we put our transsexual paratroopers into operation, once we start doing gay arps against China, I don't think China stands a chance against LGBTQ strong United States of America. We're going to be installing gay discos in Shanghai any day now. Imagine, imagine, you know, the fear. How come I'm not with some young Australian women bro to impregnate? 40 needs to have nice Jewish converted kids bro. Just taking a break from that hard work. So when our transsexual paratroopers start landing in Shanghai, I think they're going to absolutely strike terror into the Chinese. They'll see the arrow of their ways. They'll start instituting gay marriage. They'll open up big gay discos. We'll be fighting for gay rights. I think Aussie women would reject Chinese... I am worried about them moving that target closer. Yep, Globo Homo is coming for you, China. Time to open up the gay discos. Generally speaking, white women are not interested in Asian men. So I see about four times as many Asian women with white men as I see vice versa. I don't see many white men with black women. I probably see three times as many black men with white women as vice versa. But I don't see race. I don't see color. I just see one love. Taiwan is clearly one of their ambitions before then. Some American officials and experts believe that China's advantages will begin to wane later in the decade. A new generation of US defense improvements is scheduled to come online and America's defense industrial base now attenuated will be revived. Or so goes the hope. Many of the same experts believe that China might be entering a long-term economic slowdown brought on by a rapidly aging population and a maturing economy. My sense is that the window... China doesn't really innovate. They steal technology. Now they only have access to the lowest level computer chips. Asian men are not only poorly endowed, just not attracted to Western women. I attended UCLA at that time. It stood for ugly Caucasians, lovely Asians. I attended UCLA in 1988-89. I was told UCLA stood for United Caucasians lost among Asians. It was opening now and that it won't be open forever. Elbridge Colby, deputy assistant secretary of defense under Trump, told me. Taiwanese officials say that they are determined to repel an invasion on their own. We think we would win. Woo, the former minister told me. But almost no one outside Taiwan believes this. There is no scenario in which Taiwan can defend itself. Oriana Skyler-Mastro, a fellow at Stanford University strategic planner for Pacific Command Air Force Reserves, told me. A realistic goal would be to slow down a Chinese invasion in order to give the US if it chooses to intervene. Time to marshal its forces and cover the... Right, nobody outside of Taiwan seems to think that Taiwan on its own can defend itself. Distances to get there. A senior American military officer told me that Taiwan would have to hold off the Chinese for about six weeks. We think it's in our favor if it takes 45 days, the officer said. China's goal would likely be to seize Taiwan as quickly as possible to present the US with the fate of complete. According to American officials, Beijing worries that it would be unlikely to win a protracted conflict as the US gathered its allies and revitalized its industrial base. The longer it goes, the more difficult it gets for the Chinese. Mastro told me. Right, so China's going to invade Taiwan. They should do it in the next five years. They should even do it in the next year or two. That would be in their strategic interest just as Germany would have won World War One if they'd launched it 10 years earlier. So more than five years out China's chances will be considerably diminished. Can Taiwan hold on? Six weeks sounds about right. That's how long they'll need to last. For years, Taiwan's plan for its defense was to attack the mainland bases that would support an invasion. The strategy is to go to the origin. Chang, the former deputy commander of the Taiwanese Air Force, told me. The Taiwanese military maintains a formidable conventional force, consisting of fighter bombers, cruise missiles, and anti-ship missiles. But Taiwan's strategy was designed in the years when its military was closer to parity with China's. Li Ximing, who served as chief of the general staff of the Taiwanese military until he retired in 2019, told me that he had pushed for reform without so I hope there's not nuclear war in the world and Australia's like the last outpost and we're just sitting here by the dock of the bay, waiting for the radiation to roll in. Knowing that human life is going to be extinguished on our planet and this is like the last outpost but it's just a matter of days until the nuclear radiation rolls in. Wait, that was a novel. That was a movie. What was that movie? It was shot in the 1950s and then there was a showtime version but in both versions Australia's like the last outpost before nuclear radiation eradicates life as we know it. Success. The government didn't listen to me, he said. As China's capabilities have raced ahead, American officials have begun prodding Taiwan to rely instead on a defensive porcupine strategy. Yes, on the beach, the novel by Neville Shoot, and then the movie was done by that left-wing social activist. Which would aim to slow down an invading force using sea mines, anti-ship missiles and other inexpensive weapons. Taiwanese defense officials have resisted. So there are all sorts of great YouTube videos on what it would look like if China invades Taiwan. I mean they're really fun to watch. This is from the New Yorker. According to officials in both countries. This year Taiwan asked to buy a number of American MH-60R Seahawk helicopters used for hunting submarines. The State Department rejected the request, which officials considered emblematic of the old strategy. They're stuck in the 1980s. The senior American official told me. Yeah, it's perplexing how little effort Taiwan puts into defending itself. Like they only spend 1% of their GDP on their armed forces. Yeah, they have a national draft, but it only lasts 4 months. It's not rigorous. People spend most of their time cleaning and pulling weeds. They only do a little bit of firing of weapons. Taiwan is putting so little effort into defending itself that makes it harder for the United States to risk itself to defend it when Taiwan can't be bothered to defend itself. Why are the Taiwanese so weak and wimpy? Why would Taiwan man up? Like get ready to defend itself. Pathetic. This year, as pressure from China has increased, the Taiwanese government has acted more urgently. The legislature has approved $8 billion in emergency defense spending for things such as drones, anti-ballistic missile radar, and patrol boats. All made domestically. But these programs will take time. Until then, the biggest obstacle to preparing Taiwan for a conflict appears to be supplies from the United States. Taiwanese officials told me that they are waiting on the delivery of $14 billion worth of military hardware, including scores of sea mines. So there's tons of reshoring going on in the United States. Like all sorts of manufacturing is moving back into America because given that we've got the best tech, it's often now cheaper to manufacture in America. And so reshoring is bringing manufacturing jobs back to the country. We can start manufacturing more computer chips. All sorts of goods are going to be manufactured here instead of being imported from abroad. Anti-ship missiles. The very weapons the Americans have been urging them to buy. One reason, officials say is that U.S. warehouses have been stripped bare by the conflict in Ukraine. The Ukraine war has showed us that we don't have the ammunition stocks to sustain a medium-sized war. The senior administration officials said, we don't have the industrial base. But, pardon you. Okay, the chat says that Du has been very occupied doing mob tube stuff with John Wolf. I need to get on the mob tube, Griff, bro. Yeah, how much money are people raking in with the mob tube? Acquiring minds want to know. Is it more than China vs. Taiwan conflict? More than this compelling material? I mean, you don't get this kind of quality anywhere, guys. Okay, dangerous game over Taiwan. Do it as 10 million dollars for us, bro. Big money. Oh, come on, mate. This is Dexter Filkins here riding in the New Yorker. Why aren't I hearing it? Oh, man. Why am I having technical issues? Just when the live stream is getting good. Stingers and javelin anti-tank missiles are going to Ukraine, but Harpoon anti-ship missiles are not. The Pentagon procurement system is so screwed up and totally bizarre. Our procurement is asleep. Saudi Arabia is in line to receive the Harpoons before Taiwan. We are not arming ourselves or our friends for the most thing. Okay, why are we giving important weaponry to Saudi Arabia ahead of Taiwan? Taiwan is much more important. The biggest question of all is whether America would intervene. Since the early 1980s, the US has had no legal obligation to defend Taiwan. Okay, whether or not you have a legal obligation, what matters is whether it's in your strategic interest. Many of people have gone back on legal obligations. Is it in America's strategic interest to militarily intervene over Taiwan? Well, that depends on many different factors, including how much is Taiwan ready to sacrifice to defend itself? If Taiwan is not willing to sacrifice to defend itself, then why should America? But because the American Navy was overwhelmingly dominant, the question wasn't urgent. As China has grown more powerful and Xi's rhetoric more threatening, the matter has become more acute. In recent months, Biden has publicly promised on four occasions to defend Taiwan. Biden's statements buoyed Taiwanese officials. Fourth time, one texted me after the latest pledge, but White House officials say publicly that American policy remains unchanged. The Biden White House seems sharply aware of the consequences of failing to ensure Taiwan's independence. Allowing the island to fall would give the Chinese Navy unrestricted access to the open oceans, as well as effective dominance in the sea lanes of the western Pacific, through which more than $3 trillion worth of goods passes each year. Okay, this is a nice little dream. Take care, guys. Talk to you later. Bye-bye.