Ambassador Robert Blackwill

Hopefully, the president is receiving from the intelligence community their best judgment of what's going on, and they're speculating less how much they know.

I'm doubtful they have penetrated the inner workings.

There are two diametrically opposed

explanations.

One is that he's getting the military ready for action, as he said, in as soon as 2007 against Taiwan.

Yeah.

2027.

That's theory one.

And the older generations are corrupt and not warriors, to use a word that's now prevalent in Washington.

The second is that this elderly leadership of the PLA began perhaps in the faintest possible way to dissent from the path that Xi Jinping is on, which is more and more dominated by this single personality.

And nobody knows which of those it is or a combination of the two.

But I think we do have to take seriously the military threat that China represents with respect to Taiwan, which they're working very hard on every single day.

And one of the things that's happened during this period that we've been discussing, let's say the last 15 to 20 years, is they've dramatically narrowed the gap between our two militaries, especially concerning Taiwan contingencies.

And we have to do something about that.

Deterrence today is the weakest it's ever been with respect to deterring China from acting on Taiwan.

Well, you at the end highlighted the major issue, which is not really discussed in public, even in the elite, which is the question that Britain asked itself in 1939.

Are we willing to go to war with Germany over Poland?

And the question not asked around Washington in all of the palaver is, are we willing to go to war with China over Taiwan?

Yes or no?

And an American president should know that.