Hudson Institute presentation explains why war with China may occur in months—bringing huge risk of small nuclear exchange that could take down our electric grid for years, kill most Americans
An expert foreign policy and financial analyst who has been studying China’s preparations for war was recently featured in a Hudson Institute presentation, presenting evidence that China is preparing for an invasion of Taiwan, which he believes is likely in the next few months. The Hudson Institute is probably the best think tank in the U.S.; they have no political agenda.
His evidence is summarized below. There was another clear warning earlier this year when the CIA Director openly released to the media a report that President Xi has ordered the military to be ready for war, but suggested it was still several years out. In the Hudson Institute briefing, Kyle Bass uses a variety of economic and open-source information that lays out a convincing case that China has committed to achieving their half century plus old goal of retaking Taiwan, and may invade in months, not years. As the Intelligence Community notes, the vast majority of intelligence comes from “Open Sources”—unclassified information in the media, economic and business transactions, that can telegraph a nation’s intentions and preparations for war.
A key starting point to understand that China’s invasion of Taiwan is highly likely is to remember that Taiwan was part of China, and after the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, the losing party retreated from the mainland to the Island of Taiwan and continued to claim that they were the sole legitimate government of “China”. In 1971, the United Nations sided with Communist China (the “People’s Republic of China) and expelled the Taiwanese “Republic of China” as the official Chinese government. From 1949 on, communist China has insisted that Taiwan is theirs, and will be retaken. China’s current President Xi has made this his top priority and very openly, and connivingly, declared that he will achieve this prime objective.
In his Hudson Institute presentation, Kyle Bass explains how all the evidence points to a clear conclusion that Xi is indeed preparing for invading Taiwan and likely war with the U.S., or at least some major fighting and economic sanctions from the U.S. before we back down.
The military preparations have been happening for decades, and reported on, warned about by multiple military and intelligence agencies. U.S. Strategic Command, Transportation Command, many top generals have warned that China is clearly preparing for an attack. Some of these warnings have been condemned by the Pentagon, Administration officials, and Democratic leaning/government funded think tanks since they conflict with Administration messaging that U.S. policy towards China is working, war is unlikely.
Chinese officials, especially President Xi, have made multiple statements and changes to policy that are absolutely clear: Taiwan will, must be retaken. This is not new; China has insisted since 1949 that Taiwan is their territory and must be retaken. But the level of preparations under President Xi have taken off, and he has made it clear he will achieve this long-standing communist China goal while he is in office.
Legal changes, educational changes, every step needed to ready China to succeed with both an invasion of Taiwan and war with the U.S. have been made—rapidly accelerating under XI in the past few years. For example, in June of 2023, a new foreign policy law “essentially makes ALL Chinese companies extensions of the Chinese government. . . giving Beijing the legal authority to seize individuals’ assets and prevent them from leaving China.” China is also preparing to take over foreign companies in China.
Large scale drills and exercises with power outages have been conducted, travel bans have been expanded, blood supply donations are being promoted, the country is being completely readied for a major war.
The financial expert in this Hudson Institute study looked at the things China is doing financially that do not make financial sense, but do fit perfectly with preparations for war, and concluded that the evidence is convincing that China is preparing for an invasion of Taiwan, war with the U.S., that may happen in months, not years.
China has just stopped allowing access to their economic data, cutting off data sources that used to be available. U.S. companies doing economic data collection in China have been raided, under new Chinese anti-foreign espionage laws. If China was preparing for war, they would have Chinese companies default on U.S. denominated bonds. And that is what they are doing; 65% of USD denominated bonds for Chinese property developers are in default—while these same companies have only 21% of their on-shore bonds in default. These actions are bad for China’s economy, they will reduce foreign investment in China—but they are good preparations for war.
Another way you can see Chinese preparations for war are stockpiling and controlling vital economic resources they will need access to, as Kyle Bass laid out in his Hudson Institute presentation:
China with 20% of the world’s population is hording 70% of the world’s grain reserves. They have built up a wheat stockpile of a year and a half!
In sum, Kyle Bass concludes the intent is clear and preparations have been made to the level that it is “highly likely” that China will invade Taiwan, risk war with the U.S., possibly within months.
The Fortitude Ranch threat watch assessment, drawing on other sources, is that Xi will indeed order the invasion of Taiwan before leaving office, though we suspect it is more likely to be next year, before Biden leaves office. It could of course happen now.
The big risk for us is that China will probably engage in launching a small number of nuclear weapons at the U.S. to force the POTUS to back down. One of the horrible unintended consequences of having a small ballistic missile defense system is that it actually INCREASES the likelihood of a small Chinese nuclear attack. Reason: They can launch a few ICBMs as they notify POTUS “we have launched a small nuclear attack that your ABM system can handle, as a final warning that you must cease support of Taiwan or fight the PRC.” If the ABM system destroys all their incoming warheads, China has not killed any Americans, and applied maximum pressure to force the U.S. out short of all-out war. My bet is that Biden would definitely back down at this point. Unfortunately, the odds are that our ABM system won’t knock them all out. And if one detonates high up for a HEMP (High altitude EMP) attack, our electric grid could be destroyed. As another former CIA Director, who chaired the Congressionally sponsored study of an EMP attack on our grid, a successful HEMP attack could end up killing 90% of the U.S. population since no power for at least a year, mass starvation, no municipal water systems, and no law and order. If you want to understand how vulnerable the grid is, and how its loss will kill most Americans, watch the fantastic professional documentary Grid Down Power Up at griddownpowerup.com.
If you think the U.S. government is going to provide you an honest assessment and warning of war with China, stop deluding yourself. Such frank honest warnings are highly unlikely:
- War with China would be bad to catastrophic for the U.S., a huge failure, and the Biden Administration will not admit that present policies are failing and the likelihood of war is high and rising.
- Military generals who have warned of China’s accelerating readiness for war have been punished for leaking to the press their warnings.
- Many leading “think tanks” are government funded and, unlike the Hudson Institute, won’t allow honest warning to the public their government benefactors do not want. The Brookings Institute (Democratic Party leaning) condemned a recent general’s warning of war with China as “dangerous.”
- There are no votes to be gained for politician by issuing public warnings of the increase in the likelihood of a nuclear exchange with China (or an H5N1 pandemic, loss of the electric grid, many other obvious, “inevitable” threats).
- Western democracies consistently underestimate how more ruthless foreign leaders could choose war (Nazi Germany, Ukraine, many other examples).
- China will try to achieve as much surprise as possible for better initial military success, pushing out disinformation and misleading information to fuel western hope that war is unlikely, can be avoided.
- Administration supporters who want the public to have confidence in their ability to manage China will condemn warnings as self-serving efforts to increase military spending.
Fortitude Ranch reported on the China Taiwan invasion and nuclear exchange risk to us in a recent Fortitude Ranch newsletter excerpted here:
March 2023 Fortitude Ranch Newsletter China threat update:
There is little doubt: China will attack and regain Taiwan; just a question of when and whether or not U.S. suffers EMP attack destroying our electric grid in the process
When China invades Taiwan it will be the most expected invasion in history. They aren’t just making all the critical military preparations, they continue to trumpet their insistence that Taiwan belongs to China and will be reunited by force.
This doesn’t make headlines in mainstream media, but the Wall Street Journal continues to run reports about the obvious preparations and indications, the following just in past few weeks:
- The continued rapid buildup of Chinese military weapons
- After years of illegally seizing small islands in the southwest Pacific, China has built them up into naval bases and airfields for missiles and aircraft that can sink carriers we send to support Taiwan
- Chinese military exercises, launching missiles over Taiwan for “what is believed to be the first time”
- The Pentagon, U.S. Strategic Command, the U.S. Navy Chief of Operations, have all been warning of the growing Chinese nuclear arsenal and their buildup for retaking Taiwan, a real risk of war this year
- CIA reports (in open press U.S. media) that President Zi has set a deadline for China’s invasion of Taiwan
- China’s Cyber-attacks on Taiwan are already underway
Most Americans don’t trust our “mainstream” media, and the alternative media sources are also untrusted. We find British and Australian media provides the best and least biased sources of world news, led by the BBC.
If you don’t think a Chinese invasion of Taiwan is likely, watch these videos from Sky News Australia, a leading “mainstream,” “professional” media source:
The analyst in this Australian show points out both President Xi’s determination to retake Taiwan and fulfill the promise made by Mao Zedong at the founding of the People’s Republic Of China to regain their territory, and the best timing for this attack—while Biden is President rather than a potentially more staunch POTUS.
Chinese military doctrine calls for cyber-attacks prior to a physical invasion. These cyber-attacks and cyber “war” are already underway (again a trustworthy, Australian news source):
If you ever wondered how Germany’s aggression and plans for WWII could have been missed, with people like Winston Churchill regularly and very publicly warning of the military build ups and hostile intentions, seeing how we ignore the buildups, threats and warnings today may give you a better understanding. Big Government likes the public to “not be alarmed” and trust in their judgment, and it is human nature to try and ignore bad things we can’t personally do anything to stop.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has absolute one-man rule in a communist party-controlled state. Like Putin, he has eliminated term limits. His #1 announced, widely proclaimed top goal is to return Taiwan to Chinese control. No intelligent analyst of China can come to any conclusion but that China will seize Taiwan.
We have been warning that a Chinese attack on Taiwan is virtually “inevitable” (they openly insist they WILL retake Taiwan), with a big chance that this could lead to Chinese nuclear strikes on the U.S. that take down our electric grid (for a year or many) and plunge us into a horrible collapse.
Our concern is that Putin invaded Ukraine as part of an agreement that China would support him and use the Ukrainian War to improve conditions for them to invade Taiwan. The huge expenditure and draw down of NATO and U.S. weapons and ammunition given to Ukraine will certainly help China, and lead to a cutback or cessation of western arms flowing into Ukraine when they attack Taiwan.
The huge Russian losses of men and equipment in Ukraine are probably due to their incompetence and the big advantages of defending versus attacking. But this meat grinder has been carried out with massive Ukrainian expenditure of U.S. and NATO munitions. NATO weapons stockpiles are depleted and the U.S. is so far behind in anti-tank missiles and other conventional munitions that contractors cannot get current orders produced until 2026 according to recent Wall Street Journal reporting. There is a much bigger Dept of Defense budget, but Naval and Air Force weapons production are falling behind schedule. China and Russia (plus Iran, North Korea, Syria) are allied in their opposition to the U.S. The carnage in the Ukraine is clearly hurting Russia, but could help pave the way for China’s invasion of Taiwan. And once China invades Taiwan if war with China ensues, with a disaster on the home front from even a small nuclear exchange, U.S. support for Ukraine will very likely cease as we finally focus on U.S. security and survival.
As we’ve explained in past newsletters, our far bigger concern than Ukraine and Taiwan is that Putin could decide to clandestinely release a virus (like a human-to-human transmissible variant of H5N1, in the news recently as a growing threat) in the U.S. and West Europe to knock out support to Ukraine. When China does attack Taiwan, they will threaten nuclear weapons use to get the U.S. to back down. If they (or North Korea) detonate just one or two nuclear weapons in the atmosphere over the mainland U.S., we will lose our electric grid for at least a year, perhaps longer. The huge Chinese spy balloons over the U.S. could easily carry a nuclear weapon large enough to take down our electric grid. Whether it’s a bio attack and pandemic, or loss of the electric system that triggers it, the collapse that results could kill most Americans. We can’t survive more than a month without a functioning economy, food distribution, and water systems working. They won’t be working in a collapse for months or years. Don’t expect normally good but unprepared neighbors, and definitely not the million gang members and two million jailed Americans that would get out, to calmly stay at home and die.