David Shedd, who held top level positions across U.S. intelligence during a roughly 40 year government career, says there’s a “50-50” chance of Xi Jinping moving on Taiwan in 2027.

“I think that Xi has made it part of his permanent legacy to bring Taiwan into the fold,” Shedd said on the SpyTalk podcast. “It may take on different dimensions in terms of initially cording it off in terms of access to the outside world and that sort of thing, in hopes that it doesn’t require an invasion. But I think an invasion is likely, certainly by the end of the decade.”

But it won’t be easy for China, he told SpyTalk’s Michael Isikoff and Karen Greenberg. “I think that in the end, Taiwan will fight back very, very hard. It’s nationalistic in its own right,” he added, stemming from its own revolutionary history. In the 1920s Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalists split from Mao Zedong’s communists, fought a losing civil war and fled to Taiwan in 1949 as the communists rode to victory in Peking (as it was then called). Chinese leaders since then have vowed to one day seize Taiwan, which they routinely refer to as a “renegade” or “breakaway” province.

Xi Jinping has been “a keen observer of both what has been…the capabilities of Iran to respond to” U.S. and Israeli air attacks, said Shedd, whose final government post in 2014-2015 was as acting director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. He also served in senior positions at the White House National Security Council, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the CIA, where he was chief of Congressional Liaison.

“So I think it’s a 50-50 in terms of 2027 in going forward on” Xi invading Taiwan, Shedd said. “I would have to have inside information as to what lessons he’s actually taking away” from the Iran war, “but he is a keen observer of [U.S. military action].”

Iran Gamble

As for Trump’s attack on Iran, Shedd called it “a high wire act in terms of going in on Saturday and decapitating the leadership, including Ayatollah Khamenei and the rest of the leadership. It’s historically proven that there is no war that’s ever been won from the air…The idea that somehow it will bring about regime change is very much in question, in my view, after [observing] 47 years of the Iranian revolution…”

The regime’s security organs “will not go down without a fight no matter what takes place because it’s really the preservation of an ideological, religious-driven motivation in terms of holding on to power,” he added.###

Do listen to the entire, fascinating interview with Shedd, as well as Isikoff’s and Greenberg’s lively discussion of other burning issues on the national security front. You can listen free here, on REDCIRCLE, or whatever your preferred listening platform.