I appreciate the comment, and think there’s a lot of good stuff here! I agree with quite a bit of what you’ve said, but I’ll focus on the disagreements.
EA is already seen as somewhat biased towards western liberalism, and taking such a provocative move could hurt the few EA orgs and people that exist in China, not to mention make it harder for us to dialogue and cooperate with Chinese orgs that are sympathetic to things like AI safety and governance.
I think there’s a risk here, in the same way there’s analogous risks with EA’s getting involved with many divisive political questions. But I think this means we should act carefully, not avoid all contentious issues entirely. If advocating a stronger deterrence strategy seemed worthwhile, I think it’d be best not done under an explicitly EA auspice. That said, as always, I’d encourage we just concede to the cost-benefit calculus and I’m not sure how that’d pan out here.
I think, cooperation and coordination with China on various other existential risks, particularly trying to coordinate to avoid AI arms race dynamics, is very, very important. I don’t know how you’d weigh that against the risks associated with Taiwan though.
I agree. I assume the end of cooperation on these issues contributes to 40% of the catastrophic risk stemming from an invasion (section 2.2).
For them, waiting longer increases their odds of success, so they are incentivized to wait and bide their time. If Taiwan/US power suddenly surged and showed signs of outpacing China, this would create alarm and possibly push the timetable for an invasion forward. A military buildup in Taiwan could, instead of ensuring deterrence, lead to an arms race.
I think arms race fears would feel more concerning to me if A. China wasn’t already investing massively in the assets necessary to invade Taiwan and B. I didn’t already believe that there’s already a disturbingly high chance the decision has already been made and the question is “when” not “if”. But Taiwan could potentially avoid this by focusing on the composition rather than size of their defense forces. It seems like there should be some way to thread the needle by maximizing lethality (according to PLA planners) while minimizing alarmingness to party cadres.
For Xi Jinping, the calculus is that a successful takeover of Taiwan needs to have a minimum of casualities. The One China Policy means many families have only one son, and many of them dying in battle could be quite destabilizing for Xi’s government. The military has not been tested in a very long time. A failed invasion would be another historical humiliation, so they have an incentive to be cautious and only act in the best possible circumstances for them.
This is just an argument that deterrence is possible. If you make the outcome of war scary enough, China will try peace harder before resorting to force.
While there’s a tendency in the west to view the CCP as this monolithic power seeking entity, my observation from afar is that there seems to be a mixture of ideological and pragmatic reasoning within the party, and many people still see themselves as part of the socialist “good guys” against western imperialism. It doesn’t fit their narrative to attack first. China has a no nuclear first use policy. Even the U.S. doesn’t have that. If I had to predict the most likely action by China, it would be to start with a cautious blockade of Taiwan, designed carefully such that the Americans would have to “strike first” by attempting to break the blockade, giving China a casus belli of sorts.
It’d be strange if most people didn’t see themselves as the good guys. But that doesn’t seem incompatible at all with first launching a first strike—surely the long list of surprise attacks weren’t coordinated by people thinking “Oh yes, we’re the baddies”. I accept that narrative can be surprisingly important here, but the benefit of pretending the high moral ground is abstract, and the cost of leaving US carriers and bases unmolested on the eve of an invasion is, as you said, a historical humiliation.
I didn’t get into a blockade scenario here, and my thinking on that is embryonic but my basic model of the PRC leadership is they want a fait accompli, a done deal. A quick decapitation and occupation would just mean the world has to accept it. But a blockade could mean months or even years (c.f. Cuba) of eroding global goodwill towards China, and potentially hardening resolve in Taiwan against a PRC occupation / unification. It also leaves their navy potentially overstretched. A lot of reasons here I think it’s not the first option, but something to explore more and I’d invite more forecasting here!
I’ll admit that a first strike is still probably in the calculus of any serious strategic considerations by China. I’m just suggesting there are political/cultural reasons why they might hesitate to take such a drastic action. There’s also the historical fact that the last time someone (the Imperial Japanese) tried this on the U.S. (Pearl Harbor), it ended up being disastrous for them.
Also, given that your own estimates put U.S. intervention at about 50%, assuming Chinese planners have similar estimates, they might be thinking about rolling the dice on this with something like a limited blockade to test the waters of a U.S. response, and try to avoid getting the U.S. actively involved (similar to how Ukraine is currently playing out). An outright first strike would remove this possibility, guaranteeing U.S. involvement from the get go.
I should clarify that I don’t think we should abandon deterrence entirely. My thoughts are more that we need to balance the tradeoffs and consider the strategic situation carefully. In the limit, having an obviously insurmountable defensive force to deter an attack would be ideal, but we realistically can’t get there without a massive effort that will alarm China and likely accelerate the schedule for an attack. What we probably would prefer is to something along the lines of tit-for-tat increases in military strength that keep the gap from either closing or opening up more (and potentially offer the possibility of mutual reductions and de-escalation). This I think encourages China to wait for an opportunity that may (hopefully) never come.
I also think, given China’s industrial capacity, that trying to outpace them is unlikely to succeed anyway. China has been building ships far faster than the U.S., much less Taiwan, is able to. The U.S. especially has aging shipyards and ships that are getting older every day, with overbudget projects like the Zumwalt and the cancelled Littoral Combat Ship showing how problematic things have become.
There are things like the Porcupine Strategy proposal to abandon offensively capable weapons like F-16s and Abrams tanks for Taiwan in favour of more defensively oriented and far cheaper weapons like man portable Stinger and Javelin missiles and lots of drones. I do think there’s some merit to this idea, particularly since it wouldn’t require as much buildup time (you might even be able to smuggle them in before anyone realizes it), which makes it less likely that China will see a “window of opportunity” before the buildup is complete. (Edit: I double checked and realized you do mention this idea already, so apologies for not noticing that earlier.)
In general regarding EA involvement in this though, I think a lot of thought has already been put into these concerns by the people within the NatSec establishment, such that I’m not sure what EAs can actually add to the equation. As you mentioned, it certainly isn’t a neglected cause area. The gain from adding some EA affiliated money or people into this equation seems to be unlikely to me to be worth the potential alienation of China. Again, I’m thinking about wanting to coordinate on other risks and also EAs and their orgs in China, who already have a hard enough time as is. Encouraging some EAs to get involved in the NatSec stuff is already somewhat done (notably, past EA Global conferences have been held in Washington D.C.). The people who don’t like EA already think we’re too cozy with the establishment, and this would likely add yet more fodder to the critics.
Edit:
Just wanted to add, I do appreciate that your analysis was very thorough and probably took a lot of work to put together. Thanks for putting this together! Even if I’m somewhat critical in some parts, I think, overall, it’s a thoughtful and well presented set of arguments.
Also, I mentioned the “good guys” thing in part because a lot of people I’ve debated about these issues with in the past (particularly on the sordid place that was Twitter), had a kind of caricatured view of China as this mindless dystopia of sorts. I also appreciate that you discussed things like the Chinese Civil War and historical causes and the KMT, which are often left out when talking about the Taiwan situation (which in news media and social media arguments is often framed in a way that makes it seem like China is just being expansionist).
There’s also the historical fact that the last time someone (the Imperial Japanese) tried this on the U.S. (Pearl Harbor), it ended up being disastrous for them.
I think there’s an important disanology with a first strike against the USA now. Japan woefully underestimated the USA’s manufacturing ability. We rebuilt all our lost fleet and then some. I really doubt we’d be able to rebuild in the time it’d become relevant to actually challenge the PRC—indeed you seem to be aware of this issue. I think it’s better to imagine China as the USA during WW2 in terms of capacity to fight an industrial war.
And yes, I agree that trying to match China industrially is setting yourself up for failure. I think there could be a smarter way as you note (and note I noted! - Hah!) by focusing on less flashy but highly lethal and asymmetrical systems. If I was China I’d really want to know how well Taiwan’s autonomous naval drones work.
In general regarding EA involvement in this though, I think a lot of thought has already been put into these concerns by the people within the NatSec establishment, such that I’m not sure what EAs can actually add to the equation.
Yep, I think this is super fair. I’m not sure if we have something to contribute, but I lean towards an optimistic maybe. One of the key points I wanted to make is that given the risks involved, it seems like we should try a little bit harder to see if we can carefully contribute in a clearly beneficial way before throwing in the towel.
Also thanks for the kind words! I’ve found your comments very helpful. You may be right! I think we should try harder to find out, the stakes are high.
Hi Joseph,
I appreciate the comment, and think there’s a lot of good stuff here! I agree with quite a bit of what you’ve said, but I’ll focus on the disagreements.
I think there’s a risk here, in the same way there’s analogous risks with EA’s getting involved with many divisive political questions. But I think this means we should act carefully, not avoid all contentious issues entirely. If advocating a stronger deterrence strategy seemed worthwhile, I think it’d be best not done under an explicitly EA auspice. That said, as always, I’d encourage we just concede to the cost-benefit calculus and I’m not sure how that’d pan out here.
I agree. I assume the end of cooperation on these issues contributes to 40% of the catastrophic risk stemming from an invasion (section 2.2).
I think arms race fears would feel more concerning to me if A. China wasn’t already investing massively in the assets necessary to invade Taiwan and B. I didn’t already believe that there’s already a disturbingly high chance the decision has already been made and the question is “when” not “if”. But Taiwan could potentially avoid this by focusing on the composition rather than size of their defense forces. It seems like there should be some way to thread the needle by maximizing lethality (according to PLA planners) while minimizing alarmingness to party cadres.
This is just an argument that deterrence is possible. If you make the outcome of war scary enough, China will try peace harder before resorting to force.
It’d be strange if most people didn’t see themselves as the good guys. But that doesn’t seem incompatible at all with first launching a first strike—surely the long list of surprise attacks weren’t coordinated by people thinking “Oh yes, we’re the baddies”. I accept that narrative can be surprisingly important here, but the benefit of pretending the high moral ground is abstract, and the cost of leaving US carriers and bases unmolested on the eve of an invasion is, as you said, a historical humiliation.
I didn’t get into a blockade scenario here, and my thinking on that is embryonic but my basic model of the PRC leadership is they want a fait accompli, a done deal. A quick decapitation and occupation would just mean the world has to accept it. But a blockade could mean months or even years (c.f. Cuba) of eroding global goodwill towards China, and potentially hardening resolve in Taiwan against a PRC occupation / unification. It also leaves their navy potentially overstretched. A lot of reasons here I think it’s not the first option, but something to explore more and I’d invite more forecasting here!
I’ll admit that a first strike is still probably in the calculus of any serious strategic considerations by China. I’m just suggesting there are political/cultural reasons why they might hesitate to take such a drastic action. There’s also the historical fact that the last time someone (the Imperial Japanese) tried this on the U.S. (Pearl Harbor), it ended up being disastrous for them.
Also, given that your own estimates put U.S. intervention at about 50%, assuming Chinese planners have similar estimates, they might be thinking about rolling the dice on this with something like a limited blockade to test the waters of a U.S. response, and try to avoid getting the U.S. actively involved (similar to how Ukraine is currently playing out). An outright first strike would remove this possibility, guaranteeing U.S. involvement from the get go.
I should clarify that I don’t think we should abandon deterrence entirely. My thoughts are more that we need to balance the tradeoffs and consider the strategic situation carefully. In the limit, having an obviously insurmountable defensive force to deter an attack would be ideal, but we realistically can’t get there without a massive effort that will alarm China and likely accelerate the schedule for an attack. What we probably would prefer is to something along the lines of tit-for-tat increases in military strength that keep the gap from either closing or opening up more (and potentially offer the possibility of mutual reductions and de-escalation). This I think encourages China to wait for an opportunity that may (hopefully) never come.
I also think, given China’s industrial capacity, that trying to outpace them is unlikely to succeed anyway. China has been building ships far faster than the U.S., much less Taiwan, is able to. The U.S. especially has aging shipyards and ships that are getting older every day, with overbudget projects like the Zumwalt and the cancelled Littoral Combat Ship showing how problematic things have become.
There are things like the Porcupine Strategy proposal to abandon offensively capable weapons like F-16s and Abrams tanks for Taiwan in favour of more defensively oriented and far cheaper weapons like man portable Stinger and Javelin missiles and lots of drones. I do think there’s some merit to this idea, particularly since it wouldn’t require as much buildup time (you might even be able to smuggle them in before anyone realizes it), which makes it less likely that China will see a “window of opportunity” before the buildup is complete. (Edit: I double checked and realized you do mention this idea already, so apologies for not noticing that earlier.)
In general regarding EA involvement in this though, I think a lot of thought has already been put into these concerns by the people within the NatSec establishment, such that I’m not sure what EAs can actually add to the equation. As you mentioned, it certainly isn’t a neglected cause area. The gain from adding some EA affiliated money or people into this equation seems to be unlikely to me to be worth the potential alienation of China. Again, I’m thinking about wanting to coordinate on other risks and also EAs and their orgs in China, who already have a hard enough time as is. Encouraging some EAs to get involved in the NatSec stuff is already somewhat done (notably, past EA Global conferences have been held in Washington D.C.). The people who don’t like EA already think we’re too cozy with the establishment, and this would likely add yet more fodder to the critics.
Edit:
Just wanted to add, I do appreciate that your analysis was very thorough and probably took a lot of work to put together. Thanks for putting this together! Even if I’m somewhat critical in some parts, I think, overall, it’s a thoughtful and well presented set of arguments.
Also, I mentioned the “good guys” thing in part because a lot of people I’ve debated about these issues with in the past (particularly on the sordid place that was Twitter), had a kind of caricatured view of China as this mindless dystopia of sorts. I also appreciate that you discussed things like the Chinese Civil War and historical causes and the KMT, which are often left out when talking about the Taiwan situation (which in news media and social media arguments is often framed in a way that makes it seem like China is just being expansionist).
I think there’s an important disanology with a first strike against the USA now. Japan woefully underestimated the USA’s manufacturing ability. We rebuilt all our lost fleet and then some. I really doubt we’d be able to rebuild in the time it’d become relevant to actually challenge the PRC—indeed you seem to be aware of this issue. I think it’s better to imagine China as the USA during WW2 in terms of capacity to fight an industrial war.
And yes, I agree that trying to match China industrially is setting yourself up for failure. I think there could be a smarter way as you note (and note I noted! - Hah!) by focusing on less flashy but highly lethal and asymmetrical systems. If I was China I’d really want to know how well Taiwan’s autonomous naval drones work.
Yep, I think this is super fair. I’m not sure if we have something to contribute, but I lean towards an optimistic maybe. One of the key points I wanted to make is that given the risks involved, it seems like we should try a little bit harder to see if we can carefully contribute in a clearly beneficial way before throwing in the towel.
Also thanks for the kind words! I’ve found your comments very helpful. You may be right! I think we should try harder to find out, the stakes are high.