The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Podcast

Lawfare Archive: How China Might Coerce Taiwan

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From May 15, 2025: For today's episode, Lawfare Foreign Policy Editor Daniel Byman talked with Evan Braden Montgomery and Toshi Yoshihara, both Senior Fellows at the Center for Strategic and...

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Hi, I'm Jacob Krauss, a Tarbell fellow at Laugh Fair, writing about artificia...

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to offer all our content for free for everyone. Thanks for listening. I hope you'll support Laugh Fair, and I hope you enjoy the rest of the show. I Marissa Wong, and Turnet Laugh Fair, with an episode from Laugh Fair archived for May 17, 2026.

On May 13, President Trump traveled to Beijing to meet with President Xi Jinping in

a critical two-day summit to address the large-scale issues impacting U.S.-China relations.

Taiwan and the flow of U.S. weapons to the self-governing island are key concerns that Chinese officials indicated they expect the two presidents to address during their talks. Over today's archived, I chose an episode from May 15, 2025, in which Daniel Byman sat down with Evan Brayden Montgomery and Toshiyoshi Yosihara to discuss the tactics and strategies that China may employ to intimidate Taiwan, the U.S. and other regional actors in order

to maintain regional power. It's the Laugh Fair podcast. I'm Daniel Byman, a foreign policy editor of Laugh Fair, and I'm with Evan Brayden Montgomery and Toshiyoshi Yosihara, who are at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessence. Individually, a lot of these coercive efforts are not new, and in some cases don't even

have a particularly good historical track record, but if you start thinking about how they might be employed in combination, and because you have a series of at least three, frankly more, but three main targets, if you think about Taipei, Tokyo, and Washington, D.C., that creates an opportunity for those different coercive efforts to kind of work in tandem

in potentially a very powerful way.

We are talking about how China might cause Taiwan. Your piece is very provocative, you are arguing that invasion might not be the best scenario to plan for, and in fact, there's a whole host of other dangerous ways that China might be menacing Taiwan. Let me start by asking you to explain why if China wants to regain Taiwan, it might not

go to war. That invasion might not be a good idea from Beijing's point of view. Basically, the argument that we make is that there are a lot of, frankly, common sense reasons why invasion may not be the optimal route for China if it doesn't need one to forcibly reunify with Taiwan.

I think there's a prevailing assumption that a China does decide that it needs to take

Taiwan by force. Invasion is the route that will go down simply because it offers the most certain path to victory, if you will, but even if that were true, that would be victory in extremely high-cost. Despite criticisms of Taiwan's defensive capabilities, I think it's reasonable to assume

that Taiwan just simply given the geography of the theater could impose some significant costs on the PLI, that despite the fact that the PLI can impose a heavy toll on the United States, given the vulnerability of its forces in posture in the region, that would still be a case in which the United States could impose a heavy toll on the PLI, and would probably be the start of a protracted conflict between China and the United States.

So there are kind of reasons, I think, in our view for the PLI and the CCP to look for alternatives

to invasion, and the fact is that as China has been building out its capabilities and a variety of forms, its capabilities that would enable it to engage in subversion capabilities that would enable it to impose an air and maritime blockade or quarantine around Taiwan. It's a nuclear buildup which it can use as a course of tool.

It has a broader set of options than just invasion, and it has a set of optio...

can actually combine in ways that would be extremely problematic for leaders in Taiwan,

for leaders in Tokyo, and for leaders in Washington, DC. And so the thought behind this from our perspective and the concern is that now that China has or is developing this wider set of capabilities, it can frankly probably tell itself a story that there is a much quicker and potentially much cheaper route to victory over Taiwan over the United States than invasion with all the costs that that would entail.

Yeah, and I think it's also worth pointing out to think about the risks in cost of invasion

in terms of what China wants over the long term. So Xi Jinping has been following the slogan, "The so-called China Dream," or "The Great Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation," and I think some of the subgoals within the China

Dream are in fundamental tension.

So one of the subgoals, of course, is for China to become a great economic superpower to become a great high-tech power, because fundamental to China's revival is of course economic growth. And yet that particular objective runs potentially runs in opposition to China's objective of taking Taiwan, especially if a war over Taiwan were to go sideways.

But a war over Taiwan that protracted, that horizontally escalated, could be extraordinarily costly from an economic financial perspective. One can imagine a coalition of Western powers imposing significant sanctions on China. You can also, of course, imagine a scenario where even if China were to win a war over

Taiwan through invasion, that its military would be significantly damaged.

And I think we should also remember that Xi Jinping has this, as a part of the China

Dream, constructing a world-class military. So if the PLA suffers significant losses, the dream of establishing a world-class military could potentially be set back. So I think there are these inherent tensions between the subsidiary goals within the China Dream, and I think Xi Jinping and his abordinates might be tempted to consider alternative

options that reconcile some of those tensions. And it may be that that might lead them to consider these alternative options that we highlight in our article. So your work looks at at least three different kind of general categories, of course, of strategies that China might use, one is blockade, one is, I'll say, some version, probably

defined, and another is nuclear signaling. I'd like to kind of drill down an each and then talk about them in combination. So let's go one by one and let's start with blockade, explain kind of the logic of blockade and how it might work from any future scenario. Sure, I mean, just to start, and then I think, you know, to Xi's done a lot of work on

this issue in particular, but the blockade is certainly an option that is much discussed as a, you know, potential alternative to invasion for the PLI. So it's, you know, not new. I think it all to kind of highlight the risks associated with the blockade. China's ability to actually implement a blockade, stems in large part from its, just frankly,

the growth, and then a number of platforms that has the growth in the PLA Navy, the growth in the People's Liberation Army Air Force, it's something that can be complemented with Chinese Coast Guard, rather, your regular and paramilitary forces. And, you know, I think from our perspective, you know, the blockade has, you know, a couple of virtues either alone or in combination with the other coercive methods we outline.

Alone, I think it has the virtue of being something that can be implemented with perhaps a little less in the way of indications in the morning. You know, it's a little bit more plausible. I think that the PLA could turn a large scale exercise, like the ones that conducted recently, and use that as kind of the jumping off point for a blockade and catch the United States

Taiwan, Japan, others perhaps a bit more off guard than in the case of a large scale and fiddly as a salt, which would be very difficult to hide. And certainly one of the big lessons from Russia's conflict with Ukraine is that, you know, building up to invade your neighbor is, you know, a very visible effort in most cases. And so I think that, you know, surprise or your surprise, operational surprise factor, it's

important, you know, I think the other factor that we discuss and that we highlight is that

I think usually the idea behind a blockade is that it's about inflicting deprivation against the Taiwanese, the given shortages of food and fuel and other supplies, that this is really just kind of a way potentially for China to pressure and grind down the Taiwanese over time.

You know, I think our view is that kind of in concert with some of these othe...

methods, you know, the blockade may be really about demonstrating two Taiwan that it is

alone, and that the impact it could have, or you can imagine PLA and CCP leaders calculating

this way, that the impact it could have is almost more psychological and therefore has the potential to work much more quickly than a blockade that's really just designed to star about the target. You know, there are some mechanics specific to the quarantine option, for example, that might produce effects that would go towards this, this aim of coursing Taiwan.

So you can imagine a quarantine that involved Coast Guard vessels, maritime militia vessels, you can imagine Beijing employing a customs inspection regime.

So sort of a regulatory regime to reroute shipping headed for Taiwan.

And of course, China could diplomatically claim that this was an essence, a domestic law enforcement activity and to create a significant amount of ambiguity about exactly what China is doing, making it very difficult for the United States and its allies to discern exactly what's going on. That might have the virtue of buying more time for Beijing to have some of these actions

take effect on the island.

And I think one of the largest effects that a quarantine operation could produce is to place

the onus on the United States and its allies to escalate into intervening. This could be particularly problematic if, say, a US allies like Japan have a hard time justifying intervention or counter-escalation when it does not really know exactly what's going on and it can't come up with a political rationale for the domestic political audience about why Japan should be intervening on behalf of Taiwan.

And again, that might potentially buy time for Beijing to put the squeeze against the island.

So what's going to do a second possibility you raise for coercion, which is a campaign of

subversion, you mentioned a assassination, again, and play this out for us? So I think we typically think of subversion or decapitation as sort of in higher end uses a force using, say, missile and air bombardment to take out the enemy's military command centers or political centers and so forth. But we believe that the CCP and the PLA have more subtle options through subversion, through

the use of fifth column forces. We know that Taiwan has been penetrated by CCP covert agents, saboteurs, and compromised insiders, both within state and society, and that many of these operatives could bribe, intimidate blackmail or discredit Taiwanese political leaders or military commanders, of course, and even kill and assassinate them if necessary.

And the effect here in terms of subversion is to create division, say, between the political parties, to, again, so seeds of confusion, chaos, and debate between political parties and Taiwan, it could be used to divide the politicians from the military commanders. And in the worst case, it's even possible that the CCP could convince operational commanders and Taiwan to stand down and to refuse to fight.

And the big effect coming out of subversion is what we've described as a reverse Zelensky effect, which is that the goal here is to create doubt in the minds of decision makers in Washington and Tokyo and elsewhere about Taiwanese will to fight. You can very easily imagine narratives being spun that if we're seeing this political infighting within Taiwan and military commanders standing down, the storyline that if the

Taiwanese aren't willing to fight, why should we? Why should we risk blood and treasure if it's clear that even the local commanders and politicians aren't willing to defend themselves?

I think as you look at this case, you need to be attuned in the case of Taiwan and its

vulnerability to domestic level differences, you know, seems within society writ large, between political parties, between civilian military leaders, and that China, you know, may and certainly does have a lot of tools to exploit that. There's also the important role as we've seen as Tokyo mentioned in the case of Ukraine, again, as you've written about, you know, very eloquently the role of individuals, sometimes

can be hugely important, and this is, you know, potentially taking that option off the board. And so that's something that we've been, you know, we were attuned to, and, you know,

Again, just to kind of footstown something Toshima mentioned, it's very diffi...

for the United States, for Japan, for other states, to come to the defense of a state

that does not seem able or especially willing to defend itself. And so, if, you know, China can take steps to create that image or bring that scenario about, it's certainly going to make any political debate about the risks and rewards of military intervention. It depends on Taiwan, just that more precarious in the United States and in the capitals of

US allies.

And I think there are two additional points to make about why it's a version is so problematic

for the United States and its allies, and that's, firstly, it's just very difficult to discern or understand exactly what's going on in terms of the complex internal political dynamics, the personalities that are involved, or people behind the scenes that are pulling these levers. And so I think it would be very difficult for policymakers and strategists to diagnose exactly

what's going on, which, of course, complicate decision-making and, you know, cause more delays and decision-making about what to do.

And I think the second set of problems is just that we have very little policy options.

Right? There's very little that we can do when it's something that's happening internally, that, that, that there are people within Taiwan that are making these decisions that are beyond the control of the United States and of its allies.

And, you know, and I think a, it related point to that is that I'm not sure that we have

the right instruments or even the right kinds of people looking at this problem set to try to discern exactly what's going on. And if I'm free, they are going to end up on free app. Let's switch to the other end of the spectrum, which is new course signaling.

We often think of that really as its own category, but your article points out and it could

be integrated along with the set of other coercive measures. How might that work in crisis as a way to coerced Taiwan? So I think the nuclear coercive aspect of this argument is the one that's, I think, but I opening, you know, it's quite scary and a lot of this really stems from just assessing the trajectory and the scope of China's nuclear modernization over the last few years.

So for a long time, we've kind of become accustomed to the idea of China having a minimal nuclear deterrent, you know, very small focused, at least in more recent years on, you know, strategic targets, not at a high level of readiness, and that all seems to be changing in the last four or five years, they've just been increasing reports and projections of the, you know, current and then expected growth in Chinese nuclear modernization.

Besides the Chinese nuclear arsenal, we've seen numerous reports about the diversification of that arsenal to make it, you know, ready or more accurate, multimodal.

And so the situation that we, I think, unfortunately in vision and are concerned about is

one in which China has the ability to engage in relatively limited, and therefore increasingly credible nuclear threats, which could be directed against United States, US territories for operating those forces, and perhaps most likely US allies like Japan, to get them to either avoid intervention to avoid providing support or restrict their support to the United States or to back down during the crisis.

Again, a lot of this is enabled by the apparent interest that China has in developing non-strategic or theater and nuclear weapons, you know, something they haven't really done before, but if you, you know, again, look at the growth of the Chinese arsenal, if you look at reports in the US government, national security strategy, nuclear posture, a few national defense strategy, all of the military power report, all of them mentioned, highlight, or openly reference,

the fact that China is developing a more diverse nuclear arsenal and is developing precise nuclear weapons than it might be willing to threaten or even use in the early stages of a crisis or conflict. And so that gives them a set of tools that they use to put enormous pressure on the United States on perhaps Japan in particular to sort of pull the rug out from US power projection

if you get the Japanese, obviously, put significant restrictions on what the United States can do militarily from their territory. It would be an enormous burden on the United States to conduct operations in the region. And so, you know, more broadly, I guess, the way that, you know, I've thought about this is, you know, for a number of years, there's been this concern, you know, pre- 2022

about, you know, Russian escalate to de-escalate doctrine, the ability of Russia to kind of threaten or potentially even use.

It's very large, non-strategic nuclear arsenal against NATO and the United St...

them to back down in a crisis.

And what you could see or what I think we're on the path to see is a situation in which China

may be in the position to pose that kind of risk to the United States and its allies, because it is developing what can be viewed as an asymmetric advantage in non-strategic nuclear capabilities with its missile forces in particular. And to see a few words about the mechanics of this, again, one can imagine in a crisis that the PLA rocket force would increase readiness levels of its forces or move various nuclear

capable units out of garrison, they can raise alert levels or even issue public statements about China's so-called red lines to significantly raise the stakes of the crisis.

And we have some preliminary evidence that, you know, China now increasingly has fewer

qualms, if you will, about showcasing, particularly its theater level capabilities. So you have, you know, state-owned television shows showcasing, you know, inspections of their theater level nuclear capabilities or, you know, showcasing reloading of some of their missiles in the western desert of China or even test firing their theater nuclear capabilities. So you can, you know, you could see some evidence that they might be able to use these types

of methods to demonstrate the CCP's resolve in a crisis. And one other thing worth noting and it's something that I've been doing is, you know, reading the Chinese language literature and I found evidence of growing interest in looking at the Soviet attempts that decoupling during the Cold War using its theater range capabilities.

And so I think there is at least some evidence among strategists and scholars exploring

the past in order to inform Chinese nuclear strategy in the present in the future. We've talked about this a little, but let's now talk about the combination of these tools. And one thing that your article makes clear is that it's not that China would necessarily be taking one of these, how the closet and using it, but that it's going to use different instruments and combination and the effect is going to be disproportionately greater.

Talk us through a scenario or some way of illustrating this book, because I think it's a very important one. Yeah, I mean, I think the easiest way to kind of to illustrate this and think through the logic is to consider how all of these coercive lines of effort could be interconnected and could enable and magnify one another.

You know, if a blockade is put in place and it increases the likelihood on the part of the Taiwanese, but increases their sense that they are isolated and cut off from outside support to any military effort they would need to mount to restrict that blockade. That increases the likelihood that they might fold. That in turn increases the likelihood that Japan in the United States, for instance,

would be perhaps more skeptical about the merits of intervention. If Japan, for example, is targeted with nuclear threats and it demonstrates politically and publicly that it has doubts about its willingness to support US operations to break a blockade. You know, that in turn is going to create doubt in Taiwan about whether they can resist a blockade. If there is a subversive effort underway in Taiwan, that creates doubts in Washington about the

extent to which the Taiwanese civilian leadership or military leadership is up to the task of enduring a blockade that is going to magnify the political debate and debate over risk of intervention in Washington, which in turn is going to have an impact in Tokyo about the extent to which Japanese leaders want to be forward leaning in their support for the United States.

And so I think the way that we have kind of thought through this and the concern we have is that

individually, a lot of these coercive efforts are not new. In some cases, don't even have a particularly good historical track record. But if you start thinking about how they might be employed in combination, and because you have a series of at least three, frankly, more of it, three main targets that you think about Taipei, Tokyo, and Washington, D.C., three capitals where you're trying to influence the debate over

the risks of military intervention. And because all three are looking at one another and trying to gauge how resilient they are, how forward leaning there likely to be, how reliable they can be expected to be. That creates an opportunity for those different coercive efforts to kind of work in tandem

in potentially a very powerful way. Yeah. And you know, there is fairly significant evidence

that both Taiwan and Japan hold these sorts of doubts and concerns about U.S. reliability.

We highlight in the article how Taiwanese debates about the so-called America...

this theory has sort of, you know, taken hold, and the theory holds that the United States would be willing to abandon Taiwan if it suited America's narrow national interests. That has gained traction in Taiwan, and it's a theory that the Chinese Communist Party has also sought to exploit by inflaming those concerns within Taiwan through political warfare and so forth.

Japan, of course, has always been really skiddish, a concern about U.S. extended deterrence.

One only need to think back to the Obama administration's decision to withdraw the summary launched a nuclear capable cruise missile and the debates and the concerns that that raised

among Japanese policy makers. And I think, you know, Japan has become even more skiddish

after what's happened with the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. So it seems to me that there are these underlying concerns, beliefs, and so forth that these options might be able to exploit. Tokyo, let me ask you a bit more on Japan. Your article talks a lot about triple coercion, so there's Taiwan, there's the United States, and then there's Tokyo. Why are you signaling now to pants so much as opposed to other U.S. allies and partners in Asia or other countries that

really least might be useful in a Taiwan contingency? Yeah, we focus in part on Japan so much because Japan is in many ways the lynch pin of U.S. forward operations. Japan's cooperation is absolutely

essential for the United States to have accessing use of the many forward bases that would be critical

for the United States to remain responsive and effective if the allies were to decide to intervene. And so it seems to me that a strategy that's designed to split that particular alliance would have an outsized effect on the U.S. ability to respond quickly and to respond in force.

I also think that one of the reasons why China would want to focus on Japan is I think a belief

that China's path to regional hegemony is to break regional alliances. And so this is certainly one way that would reinforce this option of trying to drive a wedge in perhaps probably the most important bilateral security alliance in the region. Let me kind of reverse our focus now,

which is and talk about what Taiwan might do and what the United States might do.

And let's start with Taiwan as they're preparing not only for an invasion possibility, but also for a coercion scenario or set of scenarios. What should they be doing differently from their current approach? I don't know that there's actually a radical, a radical difference in what we and I don't want to speak or tertiary, but I think what we would recommend that Taiwan do. I mean there has been a pretty, I want to call it the school book solution, but there's been

a kind of standard set of recommendation that has been going around for the Taiwanese for many years that kind of builds in some of the original kind of porky pine strategy work and kind of expands beyond that and looks at smaller cheaper, more numerous, less vulnerable assets that could be used

to help Taiwan resistant invasion, but in many cases that I think could also have some utility

certainly in trying to resist a blockade would also have the added value of kind of demonstrating a level of kind of seriousness about the threat, which frankly is one of the undertones, I think about the US position vis-à-vis Taiwan and the extent to which the United States is willing to be able to come to the defense of Taiwan and almost any scenario is the extent to which there is doubt about Taiwan's resilience. And so I think kind of transitioning towards some of these kind of

common sense well-known recommendations, be it for anti-shipness, capability or defense capability, civil defense capability, you know, would help to kind of ameliorate that and address one of the underlying targets of coercion in the sense that China wants to not only get Taiwan to fold, but China wants the rest of the world to be convinced that Taiwan is going to fold. And so kind of standing a little bit taller in that regard, I think, is ameliorative and almost kind of any scenario

that China might or any threat that China might pose too Taiwan. You know, it does create some potential issues, I think when you talk about the specifics of the capabilities that Taiwan needs, especially when you think about longer range systems that might have a little bit more utility against a blockade depending on where China sets up, but again, given the relatively constrained geography of the theater, I tend to think that the recommendations overlap quite a bit.

You know, so I think one of the things that Taiwan needs to probably focus on...

whatever it can do in peacetime to demonstrate, it's will to resist Chinese coercion.

And that can come in many forms, whether it's the strengthening of Taiwanese civil defense, which there's evidence that they're doing that efforts to stockpile materials, in case of a blockade or a quarantine so that Taiwan would be able to withstand long-term isolation or longer-term isolation. Taiwan also needs to probably do more to go after a Chinese political warfare operatives to root them out. And that's more of a political legal process,

but I think if there's a way to demonstrate that, you know, Taipei is very serious about

taking care of or resolving these threats of compromise in ciders, fifth column forces.

I think that too would go a long way to show that, you know, Taiwan is serious, not just on

acquiring military capabilities to resist Chinese coercion, but, you know, employing these more non-military non-conedic options to defend the island against these more nefarious subversive activities. Let me ask a two-part question on the United States to wrap this up. So, a part one is just a simple, you know, isn't coercion, you know, something that main planners would consider a lesser-included case. So, if the United States and Taiwan can handle invasion,

you know, they can handle blockade, right? They can handle things that aren't as massive. And then, assuming that's wrong, what should the United States be doing differently to prepare for coercion, even as it prepares for the possibility, even if lower than expected, of a more massive, all at war over Taiwan? So, I do tend to think that you are right that it

does tend to be viewed as a lesser-included case. You know, and I think that is the kind of underlying

logic of U.S. defense planning. If the United States can, you know, build and design a force and feel the force that is capable of handling the invasion threat, they can handle any other threat. I'm not sure that's either A that we're necessarily on the track to build a force that can stop the invasion threat, but even if we are, I think it's a huge question mark about whether that force is well-suited for dealing with the blockade. And part because the blockades in

area and lower level forms of coercion raise a lot of political issues that I think are highly problematic in terms of, you know, deployment of assets in terms of timelines, you know, if you are planning to very rapidly mass forces and conduct large-scale kinetic operations against adversary, frontline military units, and a very small geographic box. That is not necessarily

what you're going to be doing in the case of the blockade. I think the natural temptation

on the part of political leaders when faced with kind of a ostensibly lower level form of coercion is to respond symmetrically, maybe not through a blockade, but symmetrically in terms of not escalating a high level of kinetic force in the hopes of trying to find an off ramp for the conflict, which is kind of an odds with how you would think about military planning and defense planning

for stopping an innovation, which needs to be basically disrupted very, very rapidly before

Taiwan would fall and then be in the hands of an adversary, and then you'd be forced into to be kind of to tackle a rollback situation if necessary. So I think that's kind of one of the big challenges for the United States. And you know, I think the other one really kind of gets to the nuclear coercion dimension. I mean, to the extent that you take more and more seriously the prospect of Chinese nuclear coercion, be it directed against the United States or Japan or

over another US ally or partner in the region. You know, it does raise or highlights some kind of fundamental tensions with extended deterrence. It does raise questions about whether the US nuclear arsenal as its size and structure is kind of adequate to provide a credible deterrent to those types of threats. And so again, a lot of the debates that you saw in the context of Russia in, say, you know, 2014 to 2019 in particular, you know, I think we're kind of due to have, you know, revisit some of

those debates in the Asia Pacific context. And again, that raises questions about, in particular, the nuclear weapons does the United States have, you know, the right capabilities and enough of them sufficiently ready to dissuade China from engaging a nuclear coercion or to kind of match its threats if it does go down that path. And then what is the relationship? Look like with US allies like Japan that rely on the extended nuclear deterrence umbrella. If one of the big concerns here

is Tokyo getting essentially afraid and shocked out of, you know, participating in the military defense of Taiwan. In the United States, as it has many times before, it's going to have to think about how it can shore up extended deterrence relationships with allies like Japan. And then,

You know, that may be a, there may be a capability solution.

kind of toeshy hinted at earlier. We used to rely on the nuclear armversion of the sea launch

tomahawk. There may be kind of comparable capabilities that could help a melee rate concerns in Tokyo about US reliability. It may be more extreme options in the sense of pursuing nuclear sharing arrangements. Like we have with some of our select European allies, which is something that, you know, the toeshy I've worked on and talked about in this context as well. But steps to kind of shore up those alliances in the face of that one particular

aspect of coercion. We highlight the nuclear threat. I think it's another kind of big piece of it

that hasn't been getting as much attention certainly as we can kind of to date focused on the kind of rapid invasion threat. Yeah, you know, and I think the, the three options that we highlight actually get at the asymmetries in terms of a lack of an in kind or direct in kind capability on the part of the United States and its allies. If you're thinking about a quarantine where we're talking about non-military paramilitary forces engaging in law enforcement action

would we, in fact, you know, conduct a, you know, a naval supported convoy to relief Taiwan.

And are we actually structured and posture to do something like that over a protracted period of time?

So I think that's that's certainly one question worth debating. The second option when it comes

to subversion, we simply don't have, you know, an in-time military response to those types of activities that are happening on the island. We just, we just don't, you know, we don't have the tools available to deal with that, whether it's in, you know, support of Taiwan or even to diagnose what's what's happening as I mentioned earlier. The third option, I think, also gets into not just, you know, capabilities in terms of the, the escalation ladder that we might have

vis of the China's theater capabilities, but it's also has a lot to do with our institutional

muscle or institutional memory. You know, it's been a very long time since we'd had to think very seriously about things like nuclear brinkmanship or crisis management under the nuclear shadow. So part of it has to do with, you know, the fact that some of that institutional muscle have attribute and that we, we really need to, in some ways, get back into the game to think much more seriously about the prospect of something like nuclear threats taking place in Asia.

Evan Toshi, thank you both very much. Thank you. Thanks for having us. The Laugh Fair podcast is produced in cooperation with the working's institution. You can get ad free versions of this and other Laugh Fair podcasts by becoming a Laugh Fair material supporter at our website Laugh Fair Media.org/support. You'll also get access to special events and other content available only to our supporters. Please break review us wherever you get your podcast.

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