Darren Farber
speaker
722 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard 26 May
Darren Farber’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.
Appearances
And ultimately, we can run the simulations and maybe there are these outcomes where we can make a dent in it. And I believe that the moral will of the country actually drives all that other activity. I'm not giving it away because it's only been male secretary defenses, but his answer was, I don't know. And I was flabbergasted by it because I thought I understood his politics.
What it tells me is, is that I think the vast majority of both sides of the aisle don't view it as the moral obligation of the United States to protect Taiwan. It's interesting because I wonder if it's the case because people think we can't win. We can't win in a conventional sense. And if it was a cakewalk for us to win, would we just do it? I happen to believe the latter.
If everyone believed that we had the ability to stop the PLA from crossing the Taiwanese Strait, it was a nothing burger for us, we'd do it. Of course, we'd have the will because it's an easy win. And it's the tough win. It would just be too hard for us relative to the quantum of capability that they've been stockpiling through the express purpose.
But we've learned a lot in counterinsurgency over the years. How long did the Afghan contingency take for us to win the war part? Two weeks? What was the Iraq part? One week? Supply chain. Yeah, it was the nation state activity after. China can bomb Taiwan into oblivion.
But if they want to take it over and they want the vast majority of people to stay alive, well, the terrain of Taiwan is spectacular for insurgency. And one of the most compelling plans I saw was the Taiwanese look at America and go, America can never be overtaken because there's anywhere from three to 600 million guns in the country. How would you take over the country functionally?
And the Taiwanese have a very good healthcare system and safety net to prevent, derange people from getting firearms. And my view is, is that A firearm culture there may be already taking hold. And if every adult had a long rifle, I don't know how the Chinese would take over that island. But it wouldn't be warfare like you and I are thinking of. Generals sitting at tables. It would be insurgency.
small groups, exactly how the Taliban ground us down, hiding in plain sight. And that terrain, by the way, is just as hard. It's very mountainous, very lush. So if the Chinese are committed to killing everyone on the island, well, then there's something to defend. They can liquefy the island and they can roll in after the nuclear fallout and they can figure it out.
But if they want to take it over and the Taiwanese are prepared to fight, I think it's a perfect setup for insurgency. We spent 20 years getting ground down with enormous military capability against a completely underfunded insurgency. And so if the population is prepared, how are you going to separate someone that's for the PRC from someone that isn't in Taiwan? Forget it.
And if the population supports the activity, I think you could see something very interesting. Obviously, supply lines would become a big challenge and there's a ring that you can create around the island over time or starve it out.
I don't think in terms of binary outcomes. Obviously, there's the one outcome where it's some combination of a false flag activity. It's saying, oh, Taiwan, through an inadvertent exercise, sunk a frigate of ours, and we're bringing in a cooperative peacekeeping force to ensure that this doesn't get out of hand and then surreptitiously take over the government or something like that.
I think they're much more inclined for an activity like this where it's ambiguous as to what's happening. I think that really works in their favor. I think something that's just overt command and control war wouldn't be in keeping with their strategy. I mean, they could do that probability distribution as well. I don't think it's as likely.
And then there's one theory that's gaining more traction is that the Taiwanese government can be co-opted successfully, right? And so a bullet doesn't need to be fired. A lot of Taiwanese have second passports and places to go. So the question is, what's left as it gets hotter and hotter? And could the political structure be co-opted with a combination of a carrot and a stick?
And that branch of thinking seems to be gaining more popularity. It may not even be a shot fired. It may be Hong Kong-esque. They've agreed we're a separate system. It's no problem. And then it's a slow degradation of whatever system that was previously there. And so it ultimately comports with Beijing.
Well, that war is always a combination of old and new. John's clearly right in that token, in that I think the Ukrainian contingency is a love letter to the American defense industrial base for all of its faults. When we make something, it works well. I mentioned to you some of those. I'm going to be in the Baltics in about two weeks, and I know what those meetings are going to be.
Get me more Javelins. Can you get me more Javelins? And every time I sit down, how come I can't get more Javelins? So Javelin's an anti-tank missile at the end of the fire. Forget anti-tank missile. And why do the Baltics want it so badly? Because they have this vision of Russian TU tanks storming across their border and taking positive control.
And places like Lithuania and Latvia and Estonia in particular really feel that sensation. And so for them, it's give me javelins. The transcripts that have been captured in signal intelligence of the Russians talking to each other on the battlefield is they have American stuff down there. Be careful. They have the American stuff.
And the Taiwanese just got a delivery of HIMARS, which is our mobile rocket launching system. And so ATACOMS goes inside of it. Gimler's goes inside of it. And these are medium and long range ground to air or surface to surface missiles.
medium range missile systems these things work man i get it they're expensive let's get some more mass into it so we can drive the cost down let's sell a whole bunch more to everyone that wants them run out the production let's create a series of incentives for these primes with these industrial bases to blow up production they'll respond to the incentives you just change the incentives
I think that's part of it. I think, too, I see this parallel to a deep seek and what's happened there in the Ukrainian contingency. There's a lot of new fangled drones that we introduced into those theaters that were completely unsuccessful. And they were coming from next generation companies. But they didn't work because the nature of that theater was evolving so fast.
And of course, now the fact that Ukrainian drones, this little printed thing that they do themselves and they're running the software and they just need to shape charge and they're printing it. I think what it shows is that when you're on the leading or bleeding edge, the franchise isn't that secure, even if you're the first there, or even if you've done something new and novel.
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