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aftermath we know that Taiwan has been penetrated by CCP covert agents agents, saboteurs, and compromised insiders, both

within state and society, and that many of these operatives could bribe, intimidate,

blackmail, or discredit Taiwanese political leaders or military commanders, of course,

and even kill and assassinate them if necessary.

It's the Lawfare podcast. I'm Daniel Biman, a foreign policy editor of Lawfare.

And I'm with Evan Braden Montgomery and Toshi Yoshihara, who are at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

Individually, a lot of these coercive efforts are not new, and in some cases don't even have

a particularly good historical track record, but if you start thinking about how they might

be employed in combination, and because you have a series of at least three, frankly more,

but three main targets if you think about Taipei, Tokyo,

and Washington, D.C. That creates an opportunity for those different coercive efforts to kind of

work in tandem in potentially a very powerful way. We are talking about how China might coerce Taiwan.

Your piece is very provocative.

You're arguing that invasion might not be the best scenario to plan for.

In fact, there's a whole host of other dangerous ways that China might be menacing Taiwan.

Let me start by asking you to explain why, if China wants to regain Taiwan, it might not go to war.

That invasion might not be a good idea from Beijing's point of view.

You know, basically, the argument that we make is that there are a lot of, frankly, common sense reasons

...