The Dan Bongino Show - The Bongino Brief - Mar 13, 2021

Episode Date: March 13, 2021

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Dan Bongino. Welcome to the Bongino Brief. I'm Dan Bongino. All right, so remember the good, the bad, and the ugly, the old Clint Eastwood movie? Well, we're going to do a different movie. We're going to do the ugly, the bad, and the good. I read this story about China and what a war with China would look like. The story's up at Yahoo News. You can find it on BonginoReport.com, also on my newsletter, Bongino.com slash newsletter. And I strongly encourage you to read it.

The headline alone should scare, clean your gastrointestinal tract. You'll be good for days. It's the equivalent of a journalism Metamucil. Here is the headline at Yahoo News. Quote, we're going to lose fast. US Air Force held a war game that started with a Chinese biological attack by James

Kitfield, a contributor to Yahoo News. Folks, it's not a joke. So we're going to start with the ugly part first. People's Liberation Army and the Chinese Communist Party is clearly preparing for war with the United States. You never know that because we're too busy worrying about Pepe Le Pew and Gina Carano and the Mandalorian. We're not occupied with anything like global thermonuclear war. God forbid we did something like that. So here's the first screenshot about what a war, I want to be clear on this,

given our current posture, our current force alignment, how we're prepared for global warfare now, how these experts think it would go. Here's a quote from a military analyst talking about what would happen in our war games now. It says, at that point, the trend in our war games was not just that we were losing, but we were losing faster. We do these war games all the time with China, and now we're losing quick. After the 2018 war game, I distinctly remember one of our gurus of war gaming standing in front of the Air Force Secretary and Chief of Staff

and telling them that we shouldn't play this war game scenario of a Chinese attack on Taiwan again because we know what's going to happen. The definitive answer is if the U.S. military doesn't change course, we're going to lose fast. In that case, an American president would likely be presented with almost a fait accompli. Think about that. Let me put a timeout here. T.O.,

timeout from the sidelines. I am not taking a stance on if we should intervene for Taiwan or not. We can cover that on another show. There's a whole big show about the libertarian approach to foreign interventions, which I think you know I lean towards, and the both Democrat and Republican hawkish establishment thing, and we should intervene in every place all over the world.

Table that for a second. I'm just asking you to assume if policy leaders, the president and others, decide to engage in a war with China over Taiwan, what would happen? Well, in that first piece, he suggests our current force alignment, we would get crushed fast. And what's our current force alignment?

Our posture, our strategic battle plan to fight back. It would be to use our bases and ports overseas, to use them as forward launching bases and ports to go and hit back. Military analysts are saying, yeah, we'd probably get crushed pretty fast. Because the Chinese are prepared for that. And are engaging in access denial exercises where they will deny us access from those ports to go and defend Taiwan. So that's the ugly part. Screenshot number two from the Yahoo piece. This is the bad part. I'll start with the good part of the bad part. The good part of the bad part is we're figuring this out, military analysts, Joe, and they're developing a different strategy

saying, hey, maybe investing all our assets in ports and forward operating bases and launching from there is not going to work. Maybe we need to be more nimble and focus on denial for Taiwan from the start from China, keeping Taiwan and the straight free and clear. So here's part two, where they talk about how if we were to engage in a more nimble operation, what we would do, how this might result in the Chinese reevaluating their situation quickly if they attack Taiwan. Check this out. Quote from the piece. This is about their new strategy. The strategy strongly favored large numbers of long-range mobile strike systems to include anti-ship cruise missile batteries, mobile rocket artillery systems, unmanned mini submarines,

that's an interesting idea, mines, and robust surface-to-air missile batteries for air defense. A premium was put on surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities for early warning and accurate intelligence to enable quick decisions by policymakers and a more capable command and control system to coordinate the actions of this more dispersed nimble force. So again, the good side of bad, we're working on a new strategy so we don't get crushed by China. The bad part of the bad is we still don't have that strategy implemented. You doubt me? Part three from the piece. On a sober note, one of their analysts, Hinoat, pointed out that the blue team force posture tested in the recent war game, the blue team is us, in the recent war game is not the

one reflected in current defense department spending plans. We're beginning to understand what kind of US military force it's going to take to achieve the national defense strategy's goals, he said. But that's not the force we're planning and building today. That doesn't sound good. It gets even worse. Here's another really incredible piece by Jamie McIntyre in the Washington Examiner. Again, be in my newsletter today, bongino.com slash newsletter to access it. What U.S. war with China about Taiwan would look like. It's not good, folks. It's obviously not good at all.

It's why we should, like, Dan, you're still talking the bad stuff. No, no, no, there's a good, not good, but less bad portion of all this. From the Washington Examiner piece, here's the problem we would have. Even if we engage in this new strategy, Joe, more nimble, quicker responses in the straight, not relying on ports and bases,

having access denial ourselves from Taiwan, being able to take out Chinese transportation vessels across the strait trying to land on Taiwan. Even if we engage in all that, Beijing can't possibly give up. Here, this is a great analysis from Jamie McIntyre in this examiner piece. He says, quote, Beijing's biggest problem is that once it's in a war that it's sold to its citizens is vital, it's on what they call death ground. And politically, it can't afford to accept defeat. They must continue to fight, argued this military analyst, Henley, who said Beijing, lacking a clear victory,

even if we stop them, would resort to an economic and military blockade of Taiwan. That because of the island's proximity to China and its thickly forested mountains on its eastern coast away from China, China could maintain indefinitely. Now you see why even the good news is bad news. So if the United States decided to engage in a war with Taiwan to stop the invasion with China and sank nearly every boat trying to cross the strait from China into Taiwan. Taiwan could very easily engage in an economic military blockade and starve Taiwan to death at relatively little cost to them and great cost to us if we were defending them. Again, there's never, you know, really good news, but there's less bad news.

The good angle to this is the Chinese Communist Party. They're going broke. Kind of hard to invade Taiwan when you may have a hard time feeding your population in the future. No, no, seriously. Wall Street Journal, Joseph Sternberg today. Power or profits? Beijing's pension dilemma. The Chinese badly need places to invest savings, but the necessary reforms endanger the party's rule. Complicated title, not so much, but

the point of the story, and I'll show you a screenshot from it in a second, which matters is China's going broke because China is living in a demographic time bomb. The communists in China, who are really not that bright, didn't really figure out that China's one-child policy would lead to a demographic time bomb where their older population that can't work anymore needs to be supported by the income and productivity of a younger population. The math doesn't work out

because you don't have a younger population because you were only allowed to have one kid. Right. You want to say a little more about the demographic time bomb? Quote from the Sternberg piece. Why is Beijing having a pension problem? Because they don't have a choice. It's now a truism that China will grow. Don't ever forget this line that China will grow old before it grows rich. Write that down, tattoo it on your brain. Pretty hard to invade Taiwan when you grow old before you ever get rich enough to do it. The pension system, where that abstraction becomes a reality, has this elderly dependency ratio, this is an important number. The number of people over 65 per 100 people age 15 to 64 is approaching developed

country levels at 17 and rising. It's 25 in the US compared with India's 9.8, Vietnam's 11.4. What does that mean? Quick translation, China's getting old. You may say, well, Dan, the United States is higher in that ratio. Yeah, but here's the difference. China's per capita income, a proxy for the resources for which these workers can support those older retirees, is only one-sixth to one-fourth the level of a developed country like ours. Folks, they didn't get rich quick enough to support their older and dying population. Again, that makes it very difficult to plan a global thermonuclear war and global domination. They are going broke stat.