defense analysts think Beijing lacks the capacity to launch an outright invasion in the near term.

1. The US public can’t be allowed to know that it’s possible to build a rival military with a fraction of the budget.
2. This is the military that the US also tells us needs to be curtailed because it threatens the US, right? Both can’t be true. If it could defeat the US it can invade an island in it’s waters.

But Taiwan’s efforts to adopt more domestic sources of power such as solar and wind, which don’t need to be imported during a conflict, have run into local opposition and struggled to meet requirements mandating that local companies supply as much as 60% of the materials.

Strange way of saying ‘fossil capital won’t let them do it’. Where was that powerful local opposition when the yanks were getting involved?

Taiwan is particularly susceptible to maritime disruptions of natural-gas shipments, which account for 39% of the island’s electricity generation. A partial or full blockade would inflict severe damage on the economy after just a few days, according to Jordan McGillis, an analyst at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, a conservative think tank, who recommends Taipei increase its stockpiles of energy, including natural gas.

The ghost of Margaret Thatcher visited McGillis in their sleep.

New gas facilities have been delayed by environmental protests.

There were go, that’s more like it. It’s not local opposition to renewables, it’s fossil capital only proposing fossil fuels, probably fracking, and the ‘local opposition’ opposing that. If those activists are so efficient, I wonder if they’ll come and do a short stint in my country? More likely the people in charge (yanks included) lack foresight and only just realised the problem. Still, one can never blame the environmental lobby enough, can one?

To ensure that Taiwan won’t be cut off in a geopolitical crisis, the Atlantic Council’s Webster recommends that Taipei buy more liquefied natural gas from the U.S. If China’s navy were to interdict a U.S.-flagged ship, the U.S. Navy would almost certainly intervene, though that wouldn’t likely be the case with vessels bearing flags from non-Western-allied countries.

Damn. We know what woke them up now. It wasn’t Thatcher’s ghost after all (she’s to busy being pissed on). Can we all just take a minute to be thankful that US fossil capital is willing to step in and help? The same people who so valiantly helped Germany deal with it’s gas shortage this past two years.

Tsai effectively cut off another energy option when she pledged in 2016 to phase out Taiwan’s nuclear plants by 2025—responding to public sentiment after the then-recent Fukushima nuclear catastrophe in nearby Japan.

Don’t worry, fossil capital, we’ve got you covered. Just in case people don’t see the hint above about green/fossil energy, we’ve included another hint that the people have forced the yanks to intervene with LNG by refusing to use alternatives.

You’d think the experts in waging siege warfare through sanctions and blockades would be cognizant of that risk.

I think this is just propaganda to get people eager to give away more money to a lost cause a la Ukraine.

That said it was a funny read.