What is your assessment of China’s intentions for Taiwan?

In December of 2021, I laid out a long list of reasons why I was becoming certain that Putin would invade Ukraine. Unfortunately, that came to pass. As I was thinking about my analysis of Russia I was struck by how all of those same reasons apply to China and Taiwan.

I think we have some years before Xi Jinping is likely to go for Taiwan. Nevertheless, I am very concerned about the preparedness of the Taiwanese. They're really not in great shape to defend that island, unfortunately. Capabilities in the region have atrophied over the decades. We're trying to build them up significantly. 

How would a Chinese assault on Taiwan compare to the Russian attack on Ukraine?

If China goes for Taiwan, and if we fight for Taiwan, that will change the world instantly. The casualties that we would experience are just unimaginable and would perhaps eclipse the daily casualties we suffered at any moment during World War II. The destruction to the world economy—perhaps $10 trillion of economic value—would be wiped out.  It potentially could change the nature of American dominance and global power forever.

How does the original Cold War compare with our standoff with China today?

I assumed that there are a lot of differences between Cold War One, as I call it, and Cold War Two. I was shocked how on almost every level, the conflict is almost exactly the same. 

First, we are in a global competition for supremacy, very similar to what the Soviet Union and America were engaged in. We're both preparing for war. China is certainly building up capabilities in the region specifically for this invasion. In fact, just a few weeks ago, we saw some remarkable satellite pictures from open-source satellite collections of a training camp in inner Mongolia. [It’s] the largest Chinese military training camp, where they built a road network that, if overlayed on the city of Taipei in Taiwan, the capital of Taiwan. It matches exactly. The center of that road network is the Taiwanese presidential palace. 

Both the United States and China are building up conventional military capabilities, but also nuclear. In fact, China is modernizing its nuclear arsenal, going from about 300 warheads to a thousand by the end of the decade, as estimated by the U.S. intelligence community. Very similar to the first Cold War. 

We also have a space race, one of the defining characteristics of the 1960s space race between America and the Soviet Union. More importantly from a national security perspective, it’s a race to occupy the critical low-Earth orbit where you now have the future of satellite communications, navigation, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. We are way ahead thanks to innovations from Space X, and thanks to Amazon's constellations. But China is trying desperately to keep up. 

Second, we have the Chinese economic warfare against us by stealing intellectual property, destroying our manufacturing base, and engaging in unfair trade practices like dumping and overcapacity, and by forcing Western companies to do joint ventures in China and tech transfers.

Third, we have an ideological struggle. It's not necessarily communist versus capitalism like we had during the first Cold War. China is not a traditional communist Marxist society these days, but it's certainly authoritarianism versus democracy. We're seeing that play out across the globe today.

Fourth, we have a scramble for military bases. We are once again building up military bases in the Indo-Pacific, in Japan, and going back into the Philippines. The Chinese are doing the same thing in Pakistan, Cambodia, and Africa.

Finally, one of the most defining features of the Cold War was the spy war. Well, we have that from China on a scale unimaginable, enabled by cyber. I spent many years fighting Chinese espionage and domestic industry and government networks. They're stealing everything that's not bolted down. 

What's our strategy to win?

I'm not pro-war. I think war is hell. I think we want to avoid war. But the way you avoid war is peace through strength, through deterrence, not through surrender. There are three elements to the strategy for winning this Cold War with China. 

The first and most important one starts with deterring an invasion of Taiwan. It's important to describe to people why Taiwan matters, because a lot of people may think, “what does this little speck of land 100 miles off the Chinese coast have to do with us?” 

In Ukraine, of course, the Russians are trying to snuff out democracy and freedom there. But we're not fighting in Ukraine. I don't think anyone in America really believes that we should be. Why are things different in Taiwan? 

Some people say Taiwan matters to us because of chips, and as soon as we achieve independence on chips, then Taiwan will stop mattering to us. I think that’s a very reductionist and insulting comment about the importance of Taiwan. There's no circumstance under which Taiwan, for the coming decades, is not producing the vast majority of advanced chips. Probably a huge part of foundational chips as well. 

But that's not why we should care about Taiwan, because at the end of the day fighting just for economics is frankly not the right strategy either. You're not going to convince a lot of people that they should lose their life or risk losing their life because of a chip that goes into your car.

Then why does Taiwan matter beyond our economic dependence on chips?

Taiwan matters because it's an anchor point in the most critical part of the world. The reason that China wants Taiwan is because of geography, and because of security. If I put China at the top of a map, looking out at the Western Pacific, what do you see? You see yourself completely contained and surrounded by U.S. military bases and U.S. allies. It starts with the Korean Peninsula, half of which is South Korea, with U.S. forces on that peninsula. Then continuing forward, you have the Japanese islands. Marines are in Okinawa and other places around the Pacific. You have the naval fleet that is based there, enormous American power on those islands. 

Then you have Taiwan at the center of that first island chain, facing straight at China, facing most of the Chinese ports, naval and maritime shipping ports. Taiwan is viewed as an outpost of American power.

Further down you see the Philippine islands that are getting closer to the United States, where we're building naval bases. 

For a China that wants to be the preeminent power in the world, that wants to project power both in its region and worldwide, you can't have that happen where at a whim of the United States Navy, we can essentially institute a full blockade of the Chinese Navy as well as their civilian shipping.

To allow themselves to be contained this way by America and its allies is completely unacceptable. That's why they want Taiwan, because Taiwan would allow them to break out of that containment and dominate the entire region, pushing the U.S. Navy all the way back to Hawaii.

What would the map look like if China won a conflict over Taiwan?

The Japanese, Filipinos, and South Koreans would be very threatened. It would change the nature of that whole region. As goes Asia, goes the world. This is a region with 50% of the world's GDP, most of the world's supply chains, and most of the world's growth.

To allow China to dominate that region is not just an inconvenience. For us, it is existential because it really means the end of American superpower. It means a reverting back to our borders, and the world would no longer be safe for American troops or American trade, which is at the center of our power.

You think about the rise of America. It starts with the 1900’s. The projection of the U.S. Navy around the world, securing the trade routes for American businesses and consumers. That's what gave us the ability to become the world's most powerful nation economically and militarily. All that would go away eventually if we allow China to dominate that region. It starts with Taiwan.

What nonmilitary options can America choose to dissuade China?

We have every advantage over China. Their economy is in strategic decline because they've reached the middle-income trap. The problems they are facing result from the structure of their economy, the corruption, the centralized control, the clampdown on innovation, but also because of the population collapse that is coming.

They will probably never reach the size of the U.S. economy. Their growth rate is already at about 3%, more or less close to ours. They are, of course, a much smaller economy. If that continues, they're doomed in terms of ever becoming as rich and powerful economically as us.

They also are physically contained from a power projection perspective. Their military is also very weak. Now, that doesn't mean that they can't take Taiwan or they can’t successfully fight us for Taiwan, but they don't have the military that we do that is designed to fight any war with any adversary at any point in the globe.

We've got those advantages. We've got to mobilize them. We've got an incredible innovation base, we've got incredible talent in this country. We've got an incredible network of alliances. Whether you look at NATO or AUKUS with Australia and Britain, China has none of that. It doesn't have a single ally that it can rely on.

Dmitri Alperovitch is chairman of Silverado Policy Accelerator and former CTO of CrowdStrike Incorporated, a cybersecurity company. He is author of “World on the Brink: How America Can Beat China in the Race for the 21st Century.”