← The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
Best Of Buck Brief - Here's How a China-Taiwan Invasion Ignites Global Chaos
00:18:06
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Podcast Host
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Buck Sexton
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Buck Sexton
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Buck Sexton
So is China going to invade Taiwan? This is obviously something that I'm spending a lot of time thinking about right now because I just got back from a week in Taiwan. I interviewed the president, President Lai, and that now has been picked up by the international media. So a lot of eyeballs on this issue, which is one of the main reasons, of course, I wanted to go. But I sat down with the vice president of Taiwan, the National Security Council, national Security Advisor. I went to I'm going to answer the question, is China going to invade? But first I went to a military base to see their HIMARS artillery system. Really more like a rocket system, but they call it an artillery system. I saw a drone manufacturing facility. Of course, drones very important in military applications and all kinds of defense of the future. Quite honestly, it's going to be tech and AI related. I saw a boat manufacturing facility that on the one hand makes traditional, well, all kinds of boats, but traditional Navy boats, Coast Guard vessels, but not very big ones. I think less than 100ft only. But they are making speedboats that have an explosive payload, that are autonomous, that are drone speedboats with a big boom in them or that will go boom. That was really interesting. Went to tsmc, which is the chip manufacturer that plays a huge role not just in the global economy and artificial intelligence, but plays a very substantial role in the whole national security situation. So I got a very good overview and thank you to my friend Stephen Yates, my buddy now of almost 15 years who set all of this up. He's at the Heritage Foundation. He was my guru, my Sherpa through all of this. And my two brothers, Mason and Keats came. I just wanted them to be there and see Taiwan and to be able to soak up as much of this information as they could. And you know, they're very involved in their own ways in, well, let's just say commerce and politics and how Taiwan plays into all that. So is China going to invade? I think the answer, unfortunately is yes. So then the next question is when? Now I can tell you this. I have spoken to a whole range of experts on what's going to happen here and they disagree about basically everything in terms of when this is going to happen. Is the invasion going to happen? Different experts, and I'm talking about people in the DOD here in the States, I'm talking about people in the national security apparatus in Taiwan and outside experts. I get different answers from everybody on this stuff because nobody can predict the future. And there's a lot of variables here. For anyone who's wondering, by the way, before I dive into some of this back and forth on Taiwan, something that I think is important. If you're saying, oh, I don't care or why does this affect me? If we wake up and Taiwan, Taipei, the capital being pummeled by Chinese missiles to soften up their defenses in advance of a blockade of the island. So ships preventing other ships from getting to the area and an amphibious invasion with massive Chinese forces deployed, the stock market is going to crash like you've never seen. It will be trillions of dollars of wealth erased overnight. You will see a global supply chain disruption of the likes of which we have not seen. I think worse than what you even saw in the early days of COVID It will be an absolute mess for everybody. If you live in Oklahoma, your iPhone relies on chips made in Taiwan. And this is the point that's so critical they can't be made anywhere else. So that's why on just a basic day to day level, this really matters. So I think that everybody should first put it in that context. I also want to say my. Well, I'll get into what I think should happen, but why do I believe, after talking to all these advisers and all these different individuals, why do I think that China is going to invade? Well, for one thing they say they're going to do it. I know they've said that for a long time, but Xi Jinping is a full blown dictator, is a very scary individual and he has set a date for this of 2027. People keep saying he won't do it while Trump's in office. And to that I say, well, why? Because it's gonna be so much easier under a possible J.D. vance administration. I don't Think that's the case. So also, is Trump really that favorable toward the defense of Taiwan? It's not really known where Trump is on this now. I think that's by design. It's in a way a continuation of the official US Position, which is strategic ambiguity. Will we do it? Will we not do it? Well, we'll see. And that's the intentional position. I've never seen this anywhere else in US Foreign policy, certainly not as explicitly put out this way. That is the intentional position of the United States government on this, and it has been for a long time. Will we, won't we? We'll see. But also, China is in no danger when you start to. So that they've said they're going to do it. China is in no danger of invasion or military clash with any of its neighbors. You know, it's got India on one side, Russia on the other. They're not, they're not doing anything. Then you have the vast step, the sort of grassland superhighway that the Mongols used to conquer much of the known world, you know, a long time ago. That's not, they're not going to get invaded by any of the Stans. You know, Kazakhstan is not about to invade China. You know, Turkmenistan, all these places, they're not about to. So we know that that's not the end. Japan just wants to do its own thing. There's no invasion threat of China. Why is it building up its military in this massive way? An unprecedented buildup, churning out so many ships, churning out so many missiles. There's only one goal that this can have, because the country no one would dream of invading, China, has a billion people. It's just, it's not even on the table for anyone. So this is all geared toward taking Taiwan. And there's a deep seated need. Remember that the ccp, the Chinese Communist Party, and, and I really recommend people read Mao. The Untold Story is the one that I really love. Jun Chang and John Halliday, I think, are the authors that it explains to you that Mao is just the most evil human being maybe certainly in modern history. I don't know if anybody could be more evil in terms of the death and the sadism and the murderous nature of his policies. Yeah, I mean, Hitler's horrible, Stalin's horrible. Mao has them all beat in terms of numbers, raw numbers of people who were killed, murdered by the state, a lot of times through starvation. It's a really horrible way to go. So Mao is an evil sob and he is the founder of the ccp. And now Xi Jinping has that mantle. Xi Jinping has taken over this role. So there's reason, I think, for extremely high levels of concern right now for an invasion of Taiwan. And I'll get into how I think that invasion looks here in just a second. Our sponsor is Preborn. There's not another not for profit that does more to save the lives of unborn children than preborn. Preborn does incredible work day in and day out because they introduce mothers who are in crisis to the baby growing in their womb with a free ultrasound. So instead of just being pushed towards some planned parenthood clinic, we all know where that's going. Preborn says, hey to any mom who's having trouble, any mom who's scared, come into our clinic. We will give you love and support and a free ultrasound. And if you have that baby, two years, two years of support, diapers, formula, job placement assistance, clothing for the baby, all kinds of stuff. All kinds of stuff. They just want life to be preserved. And that's why preborn is so important. You can donate today, please. I ask you to consider it because you'll be Saving babies lives. Dial pound 250. Say the word baby. Pound 250. Say the word baby. Or you can go to their website@preborn.com Buck preborn.com Buck sponsored by Preborn. Okay, so what do I think an invasion looks like? I had these conversations again with people of all different, all different perspectives who are very focused on this issue and in many cases have access to the classified, the high side, whether Taiwanese or American version of it. And everybody has different answers. So no one knows what the answer is. But I think it's most likely that if China was to do this, you would see a combination of blockade and blitzkrieg. The blockade would probably start with some pretense of there's an issue that we're solving in the area. There's some problem that we, the Chinese military are addressing. So we're gonna do that. And we're not allowing any other ships in the area. So in a sense, they'd be daring Taiwan to do something about them. And then the blitzkrieg would be the missiles, which they're just gonna try to pummel Taiwan with missiles and then soften things up for the invasion force to land. And I think their goal would be to finish off this conflict before the US could even make a realistic effort. If it would choose to do so. If it would choose to do so in defense of Taiwan. So they finish it off. They say, look, we've taken the island, guys, this is ours. One China policy internal matter. This is from the CCP perspective, do you really want to lose an aircraft carrier or two to our anti ship missiles? Again, from the Chinese perspective, you really want to lose Americans in this fight. Very, very compelling. Because we don't want to lose Americans in somebody else's fight. Right? So this, you start to, that's their plan. And if they can get there, if they believe they can get there, I think they're going to launch an invasion. And as I've said, this is hugely problematic for the rest of the world for two reasons. One, the massive economic hit that this will create. And you're going to have, like I said, the tech economy will come to a screeching halt. Now this might go on for weeks. This isn't just like a 24 hour thing. So the tech economy, all of a sudden you're going to see real pain and pandemonium around that. So that's one part of it. And then the other part of it is we can't allow China to have full control of the fabs, the manufacturing facilities for the most advanced microchips in the world. And that's what they would have if they took control of Taiwan. The CCP would without question if they took over. Now there's questions about would there be intentional destruction of these facilities by Taiwanese stakeholders. There's a lot of, there's so many variables. This is why everybody has different opinions. But if the CCP was able to take control and then run these factories and you know, in a matter of time they probably would be able to figure that out, they will have a stranglehold on the global tech economy, which affects all of us. Remember that there's chips, there are microchips, semiconductors, in your car, in your, likely in your washer dryer, certainly in your smartphone, in your laptop, in your television. All of these things rely on chips. If China controls the chips that the whole world relies on, think about the leverage that gives them and think about the counterintelligence risks that that creates for us. So we're all gonna be buying our most sensitive chips. Cause that's gonna include chips used for military application. Everybody, we're gonna be buying all that from China. So that's where you see this is a huge problem, a huge challenge. And why I think everybody has to look at this. I get there's a boy cried wolf feeling, oh, South China Sea, the gray zone. Ships are ramming each other, they're arguing over the Senkaku or The Daiyu Islands, they're arguing over this little island chain or that, you know, fishing rights here or there. Now that's important stuff for those countries, but we don't really care, right? You're not, you're not up late at night, like who's gonna be in control of the Senkaku Islands. But now it's about going for the big prize, which is Taiwan. This is now a shift from the Chinese Communist Party. And one of the reasons, one of the reasons that we know this is that they have cut off travel to Taiwan. Almost all of it, like 90% of travel from mainland China to Taiwan is gone. That wasn't the case even five, six years ago. There was plenty of tourists coming in from China and they've cut off, they have no communication between the governments. None. Think about that. They're only 100 miles apart. No communication from the Taiwanese government to the Chinese government and vice versa, or the CCP, Beijing government. Because there's a Republic of China, which is Taiwan, and then there's, you know, democratic People's Republic of China or whatever. I mean there's all these different, or People's Republic of China, prc. Sorry, there's Democrat, I can't go straight. There's Democratic Republic, People's Republic of North Korea. Right. The longer the name and the more claims to political legitimacy in the name, the less legitimate the regime always is. You know that. So these are the factors, but they're, they're setting up to do this and I don't know, well, can they be stopped and what would the US role in that be? So what do I think we should do about this? I know that's a critical component, right? That's something that we have to know. I'm not saying we should set up US military bases in Taiwan. I'm not saying we should do the fighting for them. They told me very explicitly, the president of that country and many, many other officials told me they will fight and they will fight tooth and nail to defend their sovereignty and to defend their island. Now there's some skepticism from people in the American policy intelligentsia about this. I'm just telling you they were as full throated and clear about this as they could be. They say they will fight and I think that for the leadership, for a lot of people, they look at what happened to Hong Kong, which, what happened to Hong Kong, it's now been consumed by the CCP Dragon. It is now fully under the thumb of the ccp. The different system there, freedom and democracy, gone, gone. Hope. I was Told by somebody who's actually tied to a very prominent dissident who's in prison in Hong Kong now for writing a newspaper. Essentially I was told that the way to describe Hong Kong now as hope is just eradicated. And people see that and they really remember China was saying oh no, it's fine, it's ours, don't worry, this is an internal matter. They said it'd be the same thing in Taiwan. It would be turning that island into. A serfdom of the CCP and people don't want that. So I think they are willing to defend themselves. That's my assessment. How can they? Well, this is where they have to get asymmetric and this is where drones and advanced tech and things like anduril technology which is very much involved in trying to come up with new ways to use AI and tech and manufacturing capacity. The Taiwanese are very good at tech and manufacturing and they're going to have to produce and also work with partners to produce an arsenal of self defense munitions and capabilities that is so formidable that China just keeps on delaying, delaying, delaying. Essentially create a perpetuation of the status quo with Taiwan by raising the price so high that it is on indefinite delay. Because China's, I think the current regime is never going to say okay, Taiwan can do its own thing. That's never going to happen. You'd have to have a collapse of the ccp, but you can delay it indefinitely. You know, you can maybe kick it out 10, 20, 30 years maybe if Taiwan really gets its capabilities in order and China realizes that. And of course there's tremendous amounts of spying and espionage going on and there are all kinds of. There's a lot of cases actually that the Taiwanese courts are going through about people who are CCP moles and spies in Taiwan. So they have a tremendous amount of intelligence collection going on against the Taiwanese. So they have a good sense of capabilities. If they can get their capabilities to a point where the CCP would risk, Chinese Communist Party would risk disaster with the plan that I laid out of the blockade and blitzkrieg strike then I think that they might be okay. They might be able to continue on and make their chips and live. It's a wonderful country. I mean I really have tremendous respect for the Taiwanese. They are a, a friendly, orderly, law abiding, just very good, smart, impressive people. It's a great country of great people and I certainly think it deserves its sovereignty and deserves to just live in peace. And that's all they want. They just want to live in peace and make great products for the rest of the world. But communists have to destroy and the ccp, even though they're not traditional Marxist Leninists, the CCP wants to destroy and to own and to control. And I hope that we, the U.S. will give the Taiwanese the tools to do the job, help them get the tools to do the job, because I think that's possible. That's the Taiwan Deep Dive Shield.
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Podcast Host
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