Trae (Trey) Stephens

Right now, the answer is no.

That's a real problem.

Militarily, I think, you know, Xi has been very explicit that, you know, he intends to reunify China.

And Taiwan has, like, a ticking timeline of 2027.

Now, is he going to move by 2027?

Like, I don't know.

It depends on how seriously you take him at his word.

But

There's a lot of risk, particularly if you think about even just semiconductors as an important part of our technology ecosystem.

If China takes Taiwan and shuts down our access to TSMC, that's a huge problem for the US economy.

We really need to think through all of that.

You know, the Chinese, they have a different cultural history than we do.

And when you try to frame their actions through like a Western understanding of the world, you reach very different conclusions than they reach.

Like, you know, Western history is, you know, be open about your strengths.

And, you know, this is where the peace through strength thing came from.

It's like, we're going to tell people what we have and why we're strong, and that will prevent them from doing crazy things.

The Assassin's Mace story, which is like a parable in China, is hide your strength, bide time, and then strike when you have an unfair advantage.

And so it's to their advantage to go into these international dialogues and say like, oh, no, we're weak.

We're not competing.

We don't have the ability to do that.