Chinese Checkers

November 25, 2024

The Wall Street Journal recently published an alarming and questionable headline: “United States may only have two years to prevent World War III.” It claimed China’s Xi Jinping had ordered his navy to be ready to seize Taiwan in 2027. However, the article was written by Mike Gallagher, head of defense at Palantir Technologies, a large defense contractor whose founder and chairman is Trump supporter Peter Thiel. Meanwhile, Trump’s new “shadow president,” Elon Musk, is a former partner of Thiel’s but a big fan of China. Musk’s Tesla operates “a gigafactory” in Shanghai and makes billions there. But neither Theil nor Musk knows as much about China as former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who says the threat to Taiwan is nonsense. At New York’s Harvard Club, he recently said Taiwan is safe because of the QUAD, a military alliance designed to contain China, comprised of the U.S., India, Japan, and Australia. “There will be no invasion of Taiwan. The QUAD is too powerful. China knows that.”