Noel King

Those are extremely vulnerable platforms.

You know, like the Iranians, the Taiwanese have plenty of time to prepare, that they dug in, they know who their opponent is and they're expecting it.

And we've seen also that there's this ability to threaten your near abroad, even if you're being beaten by a stronger opponent.

So for all of America's power, for all of America's force, it's not able to force the reopening of the strait.

It's not able to keep those waters safe.

And so China's thinking, well, what will the Taiwanese be able to do in the strait if we're sending across a million men?

How many of those ships are going to be safe?

And maybe it's less than they thought.

OK, so China imagines itself as the U.S.

and it imagines itself as Iran.

In that case, it's thinking of Taiwan and what China might do to Taiwan.

Let me ask you where the U.S.

plugs back in here, because I've been reading that the U.S.

has moved an aircraft carrier and expensive missile defense systems out of Asia into the Middle East to kind of cope with Iran.

So are we now at this huge disadvantage if China is to go after Taiwan?

Not really, because any Taiwan scenario, we get tons of warning.

It requires really amassing material, men, ships in a way that's going to be extremely obvious.

And, you know, there's perhaps no part of the planet more closely watched than the Taiwan Strait.

So aircraft carriers, mobile assets, those are the sort of things you're going to have probably enough warning to move back, and we've got a ton of them in the Asia-Pacific anyway.

You know, there's