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17 May 2024 (Friday)
Timeline for Taiwan’s Date with Fate
A Mix of Capture, Coercion and Cyber
By Wendell Minnick (Whiskey Mike) 顏文德
TAIPEI - Ten years ago, Washington policy papers gave advice on how to “save” the island from becoming a Chinese buffet, minus the fortune cookie.
Washington’s reaction was to sale more missiles and F-16s, send Green Berets, and begin training more Taiwanese at U.S. military bases.
There was the porcupine strategy that has now turned into a “meme” in academic circles. There are the blockade theorists with their Lego-like models of an air and sea great wall. And, of course, a Normandy-like invasion.
After all, for China to become a superpower in the modern age, every nation-state must have its mythology. The “Saving Private Chen” movie, the statues, the medals of sacrifice, valor, victory. “Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,” - Shakespeare, Henry V.
Cyber was just a word bandied about at these types of conferences by academics that had trouble using PowerPoint, but my attendance to the biannual Hackers in Taiwan Conference (HITCON) and the annual bad boy, COMPUTEX, has convinced me that that battle began long before Washington knew the difference between a black hat and a white one.