Transcription
For six weeks, the United States has thrown most of what it has at Iran and, in so doing, skillfully achieved all its tactical goals while demonstrating a vacuum where you'd expect strategic goals to live. The US's chief geopolitical rival, China, has been watching carefully and trying to learn the lessons in advance of whatever it's going to decide to do in relation to Taiwan. Both in terms of how it might have to deal with Trump's America in that scenario and also what it might expect in terms of resistance from the island of Taiwan itself.
Because, of course, China is not the only one taking notes on what's going on. Taiwan has also been seeing smaller powers, Ukraine, Iran, withstanding the attacks of the larger power. Around a month ago, China actually published five lessons it had learned from Iran, which was a deliberate communication it put out into the world to have an impact on others. I covered it on this channel, but a lot's happened with the Iran war since then. And we've learned a great deal as well about how it's all being digested by China.
So, let's do a deep dive into all of that here now because it's going to be a huge part of the global situation for the world over the second half of the Trump term and for the decade to follow. Frankly, it's a story of a two-way learning race between China and Taiwan, with the United States apparently learning very little, at least for the next couple of years.
So, let's start with what China has learned because China has had the best position for the last few weeks. It has just sat there watching as America goes all out in using its military forces. It has noted that they've been depleting their expensive weapons stockpiles and it's expected to take quite a long time to replenish them. It has observed all the ways that they have succeeded and, most importantly, the ways that they have failed.
Meanwhile, they are sitting on the fastest growing military force themselves in the world, with all modern equipment, and they have it there still, ready to use, untouched, undiminished. They put a couple of toes into the water, providing geospatial intelligence to Iran and noting that that service had survived the US counter efforts to disrupt them. China quietly played the role of diplomatic mediator, which they didn't talk about, they didn't boast about publicly, but in fact, Trump publicly noted their role, saying this: "China got Iran to come to the negotiating table." All of which is useful for Xi Jinping in seeking to project China as a force for stability in the world.
Now, the truth is somewhat different, but it's relatively easy to be seen as the stable one if you're standing in contrast to Donald Trump, who has been threatening to end entire civilizations in his spare time when he's not picking fights with a pope. So the lessons China has noted, of course, as we all have, the massive leverage that was secured for Iran by closing the Strait of Hormuz. It impacted the entire world, including China, of course. Now, China was better prepared than anyone else with larger strategic stores of oil and large investments in renewable energy. But that just gives them a buffer. So, of course, they have an intense interest in getting the Iran war resolved.
But when considering the role that the United States might play with regard to Taiwan, it's relevant to China just how quickly the US leadership was feeling the pressure from economic consequences. Pew Research polling data in March showed that Americans cared far more about the gas prices at the pump impacting their daily lives than they did even the numbers of US military casualties. Now, they cared about the latter, of course, just not as much as the factors that affected them day-to-day personally. China understands that Taiwan potentially represents a similar point of leverage for China because Taiwan currently produces more than 37% of the world's microchips, an essential resource. If China decided to blockade Taiwan, which would be a relatively low-cost measure for it to take, the impact, particularly on the United States, but across the world as well, would be massive, measured in the trillions of dollars. So, how quickly would Trump, in that case, have to back down?
In the past, this factor was presumed to work the other way around. Back in 2021, which is not that long ago, the then president of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen, called Taiwan's chip industry a "silicon shield." Writing in Foreign Affairs magazine, she argued that "American reliance on Taiwanese chips would protect the island against any aggressive attempts by authoritarian regimes." (No idea who she had in mind) to disrupt global supply chains. The Iran war may well have demonstrated to China how that logic can be flicked on its head because dependency creates vulnerability for the dependent party, not protection for the supplying party.
Suppose when Xi Jinping meets Trump in a few weeks' time, he says to him, "We're taking Taiwan. Stand back, and we'll guarantee minimal disruption to you of your supply of high-end chips. But stand in our way, and we will blockade the island, which is very easy for us, very costly for you to oppose, and the supply of chips will come to an absolute halt." Now, I'm not saying that is the approach that Xi Jinping will decide to take, but it is a powerful position.
One of the things we know that Taiwan and other allies, such as Japan, are most fearful of is if Trump decides to strike a grand bargain with China where they know they will be part of what's on the table. You know, like he tried to do with Ukraine, except that the Europeans worked hard to frustrate him, and of course, the Ukrainians refused to go along with it.
Achman, a China expert at Stanford, posited a scenario where China doesn't impose a full military blockade. It simply says, very much like Iran at the moment with the Strait of Hormuz: "Of course, you can trade with Taiwan. You just have to get our permission first." Taiwanese airlines would have to submit flight manifests to Beijing for approval. Ships could be boarded for inspections at China's pleasure. Some people might be told they can't leave Taiwan for whatever legalistic construction they've come up with to justify it, which can be as transparent as you want.
With the former version, you would say China had the incentive not to act on Taiwan until the USA had removed its dependence on Taiwanese chips, which would take a decade, perhaps at least half a decade. But now it's possible that China sees it the other way around. It has a half-decade window in which to take action because if it acts sooner, then it has the most leverage on the United States, and indeed on the wider world.
China has also noted that Trump's America has done a huge amount to push away its allies, leaving it largely isolated. A process I've commented on here rather often, of course. And of course, China can't take it for granted that a successor to Trump, who is more reasonable, won't see those allies come back. So, what does this mean for America's ability to rally an alliance to its side in the event of a crisis with Taiwan? How much of a counterweight is China's development of closer ties with many of those allies as Trump has pushed them away? It's an open question.
NATO held together on Ukraine, which is a defensive war that was provoked when a democracy was invaded. NATO, however, fractured on Iran, a US offensive war of choice. Now, the dynamic in the case of Chinese coercion on Taiwan, short of military invasion, it's going to fall somewhere in the middle. Framan summed it up like this: "If I'm Beijing, that signals to me the Americans have no economic contingency plan if things get challenging in the Western Pacific, and the Americans are incapable of marshalling an effective allied coalition."
Add to that the observation of the military exchanges and all the lessons that China will have been learning about those on a pure warfighting level, which I'm not going to go into here based on the imperfect public information as it currently exists. We may get more of that later. Now, it's worth noting there are some barriers to China learning all of those lessons, and that's part of the overall geopolitical position as well.
Now, the United States has bigger barriers because Donald J. Trump is a major obstacle to the US being effective. He does not read intelligence briefings, does not ask advice, does not visibly learn from experience at all, and so on and so on and so on. But China has its blind spots as well. Xi Jinping is more careful and thoughtful than Trump, which is kind of damning with faint praise because so is a dead dog in a ditch, frankly. But China is still a dictatorship, and so Xi Jinping has his own preferences, and those around him will not dare to contradict them.
According to the Institute for the Study of War, that also forms a filter through which the lessons of the Iran war are being passed, some to be learned, some to be discarded. So, for instance, Xi Jinping made "so-called intelligentization," an approach to AI warfare, a priority back in 2020. As a result, the People's Liberation Army, the PLA, invested heavily in expensive AI-enabled drone swarms and sophisticated, survivable reconnaissance drones similar to US MQ-9 Reapers and large fixed-wing platforms for long-range precision strike. These could turn out to be formidable weapons, for sure.
But both Ukraine and Iran showed battlefields where low-cost, dispensable drones absolutely dominated the battlefield. It was a significant leveler between the smaller power and the larger invader. The ability to overwhelm expensive missile defenses with large numbers of cheap drones. Massive disparity, therefore, in the relative cost of each approach. Hence the rise to prominence of the term "asymmetrical warfare," which you've probably been hearing. Such cheap drones can be produced faster than the enemy can destroy them. Operated by people who can quickly be trained to do so. Hence why they're so suitable for that situation. And of course, they also can be adapted quickly in the light of how the enemy is changing what they do and in the light of what's been found to work and what's been found to fail.
There are signs that because of the PLA's prior investment and Xi Jinping's prior belief in it, they have interpreted the lessons of the Iran war in a way that only confirms those prior choices. Last month, Chinese state media released footage of the Atlas Swarm system: 48 drones per launcher, 96 drones per command system, all of them with sophisticated AI coordination. PLA academic journals continued discussing purpose-built systems for amphibious operations and for urban warfare. The Institute for the Study of War concluded this: "These lessons are not fully congruent with the changing character of modern war. And the PLA's institutional inertia may lead it to downplay or overlook critical lessons from contemporary conflicts even as it attempts to learn from them."
Simply put, China has spent a lot of time and a great deal of money developing a large, modern military, seeking to take the American model and pushing it to be more modern, more technologically advanced, to beat America at its own game with Chinese characteristics. The idea that cheap, simple systems may outperform such an approach is something that is clearly not going to compute.
Now, look, I wouldn't personally be as quick as the Institute for the Study of War to dismiss the idea that China's approach might turn out to be the even better paradigm when it is actually tested in battle because we don't know. It is untested. Right now, the playbook for the smaller powers to resist the much larger aggressor is to focus on the most effective cheap approach. That's likely not to change.
Meanwhile, Taiwan has been observing the same conflicts, Ukraine, Iran, and taking notes on what did work for the defenders in that specific case. They have noted that Iran's geographical advantage played a part. The terrain is in many places hostile and a huge barrier would be invaders if they dare to put boots on the ground. The US does not apparently dare. Not so far, anyway. But the PLA would surely need to in taking Taiwan, which has similar advantages.
Also, the great power of the United States has been constrained by the fact that Iran is thousands of miles away, and so it has to push its forces over great distances, giving Iran time to prepare and to impose costs on the invaders. Now, of course, Taiwan is not far away from China, but the Taiwan Strait is a lot wider, 81 miles at its narrowest point, than the Strait of Hormuz.
James Holmes, a professor at the US Naval War College, wrote in The National Interest last month about Taiwan's lessons from the Iran War, and he said this: "Taiwanese military should spare no effort to enlist the island's geographic surroundings to their benefit, making a cross-strait invasion a daunting prospect for PLA invaders. If successful, they may deter. Taiwan could mine the strait, he suggested, intercept shipping, use its terrain to make amphibious landings, 'make Normandy look like child's play.'"
The second key lesson was how Iran was able to use time as its powerful ally. American patience was tested by having high costs imposed on them over a long period. Now, of course, China doesn't have America's thin skin, its democratic impatience. So, it's not exactly the same. But China would also likely want to conclude its operations quickly to get a fait accompli before pressure on the United States to more effectively intervene and respond was able to build up.
Taiwan would also want to learn from America's decapitation strategy of taking out the top leadership. So, Taipei, said Holmes, should look for ways to disperse so that losing one segment of senior leadership does not defeat the war effort as a whole. Taiwan, as the vulnerable party, is highly motivated to learn from all of those lessons. And Holmes went on to observe this: "Lessons from the wars in Iran and Ukraine are pushing Taipei to rethink its air defense strategy, with officials now warning that expensive missiles alone cannot stop large waves of rockets and drones."
Last month, the Taiwanese defense ministry submitted a report saying this: "Low-cost interceptor weapons were urgently needed to counter the mainland Chinese military's growing arsenal of long-range rockets and uncrewed aircraft." Taiwan is also developing a layered air defense architecture. Not a Trump-style "Golden Dome," but instead combining the following: low-cost interceptors priced between $50,000 and $150,000 each, compared to Patriot missiles that cost millions; counter-drone systems using microwave jamming and laser weapons; integration of locally produced missiles with US systems like Patriot and NASAMS; autonomous navigation AI and swarm technologies specifically for counter-drone operations, using swarms to fight the swarms.
They still face an immeasurably larger force than themselves. But this is how you approach asymmetrical warfare to give yourself the best chance in that situation. You don't have to conquer the other side in the way they are trying to do to you. You just have to be able to resist. As I so often say here, Cuba, Greenland, take note.
Generally, I think if you are a careful student of history, whether geopolitical or corporate or social history, you'd conclude that human beings generally, well, they show themselves over and over again to be pretty rubbish at learning the lessons from history. All too often, people seize on the bits that confirm their priors and discard the bits that don't. Wartime and potential wartime often is what produces the exceptions because necessity is the mother of invention, and all that, and the consequences of failure are so stark.
We currently have a situation with the United States at the most senior level where it is wholly incapable of learning from the mistakes of others or even of itself. Donald Trump does not apparently learn from experience, does not listen to experts who have studied the past, and so while its military execution may be absolutely top-notch, it is undermined by the fish rotting from the head effect. The USA is not currently facing an existential threat. That means that it is forced to do better or die, unlike Iran, unlike Ukraine. Taiwan is the most likely to learn fast and to move faster because it can watch others and believe, with very good reason indeed, that very soon it's going to be their turn.
Whatever is on Xi Jinping's mind, there is no doubt he is working to a plan, and it has a timeline attached to it. Just a week ago, he received the leader of Taiwan's main opposition party. She became the first sitting leader to visit China in over a decade. That meeting was full of messages earning cross-strait peace. China has, of course, been conducting daily military exercises around Taiwan for significant stretches of time, showing its strength as much as possible. So why that meeting and why now? Very hard to decipher.
But perhaps China has learned the other final lesson from the Iran war. Because Donald Trump started off suggesting that his actions were going to lead to regime change, which he sometimes encouraged, and other times forgot about, and occasionally even disavowed. But the US and Israel had made no attempts to cultivate and develop contacts with the Iranian opposition in the places where that opposition actually exists. So the idea that a moment would come when a united opposition could seize the opportunity of all that bombing that America's been doing and make their move, or even just provide useful intelligence to the Americans about how things would likely to be to go down, that was not a factor, and arguably one of the reasons why the American adventurism has been so politically impotent, even while being militarily overwhelming. America is just not very good at coordinating with anybody else.
Through its long history, China has seen itself as a master in the art of winning wars without needing to fight. Political subversion and influence is one of the weapons used to achieve that. Sometimes even more effective than a highly sophisticated drone swarm. Now, Taiwanese politics is very fractious and divided right now. Maybe it got that way partly through Chinese encouragement. Although politicians don't always need outside help to behave badly, it is arguably their greatest vulnerability, potentially undermining their credibility in the eyes of would-be defenders or even might-be defenders in the case of Trump. Certainly giving opportunity for Chinese agents on the ground to operate on their behalf under the cloak of domestic disputes.
When President Trump visits China in a few weeks, I would imagine he is very likely to see clear signs of where this is going. If only he was capable of noticing anything other than his own aura and how people respond to him specifically. Cuz yes, the United States was astonished when Iran decided to close the Strait of Hormuz, widely predicted though it was, except Trump's America, to be equally astonished by whatever China eventually decides to do in regard to Taiwan.