Derek Thompson

to keep bases, keep a military presence.

on their land.

But in a world where the U.S.

is creating an enormous pain point, a crisis for these countries, suddenly China can come in looking like the good guy.

And are we foreseeing a world in which the U.S.

military presence essentially gets booted out because China proposes a kind of quid pro quo?

We will give you islands.

energy in exchange for you being more favorable to Chinese military interests rather than American military interests.

Turn to Taiwan.

Taiwan is going into the summer, the summer cooling season.

They have a gas-dependent grid.

They have really heavy exposure to the Middle East.

Paint the picture now of what kind of a crisis is facing Taiwan in the next few months.

Just to be clear for listeners, air con here is air conditioning, right?

Air conditioning, sorry, sorry.

I just want to make sure, no, no, no, that's right.

The finance lingo is totally fine here, but I mean, you're saying that, right, there's only so much energy to go around and the energy, if it is scarce...

can either give you full air conditioning when it's 95, 100 degrees, I don't know, in Taiwan, and also quite humid, or you can use that same scarce energy to not cool people's apartments, but rather to make the most valuable computer chips, some of the most valuable inputs in the global economy.

So just unpack that a little bit, because I do think that this is one of the more important aspects of the global energy crisis that people in America aren't quite talking about.

One thing I'm not sure I understand is that if Taiwan is facing an imminent crunch where the country, a democracy, has to choose between keeping our people comfortably chilled and running the industry that powers our economy...