The President's Daily Brief - PDB Afternoon Bulletin | Novebmer 24th, 2025: Xi Rages as Japan Deploys Missiles Near Taiwan & Russian Tracker Found Off U.K. Coast

Episode Date: November 24, 2025

In this episode of The PDB Afternoon Bulletin: Japan announces plans to deploy missile systems on an island just miles from Taiwan, triggering an immediate and angry response from Beijing. We’ll break down what Tokyo is doing, why China is escalating its rhetoric, and what this means for regional security. Later, a team of scuba divers off the Welsh coast makes a startling discovery: what appears to be a Russian tracking device sitting on the seabed. We’ll explain what was found, where it was recovered, and why U.K. authorities are now taking a closer look. To listen to the show ad-free, become a premium member of The President’s Daily Brief by visiting https://PDBPremium.com. Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of The President's Daily Brief.  YouTube: youtube.com/@presidentsdailybrief TriTails Premium Beef: Feed your family and your legacy. Grab your Black Friday gift before it’s gone! Visit https://trybeef.com/pdb Lean: Visit https://BrickhouseSale.com for 30% off Birch Gold: Text PDB to 989898 and get your free info kit on gold Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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We'll tell you what they found. But first, today's afternoon spotlight. This morning, the diplomatic dust-up between China and Japan just got dustier. For weeks now on this show, we've been tracking the growing tension between Beijing and Tokyo ever since Japan's new prime minister, Sinae Takeichi, made the remark that a Chinese blockade of Taiwan would threaten Japan's survival. That single line from a brand-new prime minister set off alarm bells in Beijing and marked the clearest public link that's been made between Japan's security and the fate of Taiwan. Now, the rhetoric has turned into something much bigger. Tokyo has announced that it plans to deploy a surface-to-air missile unit

on Yoraguni, the tiny Japanese island that sits just 68 miles from Taiwan's coast. That's close enough that on a clear day, you could actually see Taiwan's mountains from the shoreline. Oh, it's kind of like seeing Russia from Alaska. Now, Japan says this is a protective measure. The islands, in its southwest are vulnerable, and Tokyo argues that adding a modern air defense system gives them the ability to detect and intercept hostile aircraft or drones long before they reached Japan. On paper, well, that sounds like prudent self-defense. But Beijing erupted the moment the news dropped. Chinese officials called the plan, quote, extremely dangerous, accused Japan of stirring up confrontation and warned that neighboring countries should be on high alert. Then Beijing's

messaging machine turned on. Chinese state media blasted Japan for escalating tensions. The foreign ministry accused Tokyo of intentionally provoking a confrontation, and the military joined in with a wave of tightly edited videos, rocket force launchers rolling into position, missile bays opening, war ships cutting through the South China Sea, all accompanied by ominous voiceovers. Like, quote, if war breaks out today, this is my response. Hmm, well, that's very very, very dramatic. And China didn't stop there. It issued new travel warnings for citizens going to Japan. Regulators moved to slow or block Japanese entertainment imports. And Chinese commentary framed Japan as joining a containment ring with the U.S. and Taiwan. In other words,

Beijing treated this not as a routine defense upgrade by a neighboring country, but as a strategic assault on its long-term ambitions in the Taiwan Strait. For Taiwan, though, the move is welcome. A senior Taiwanese official said simply that Japan has every right to defend its territory and that stronger defenses in the region help maintain stability. That's diplomatic language for good. Please do more of this. And that gets to the heart of why this deployment matters. Japan has been shifting away from its traditionally cautious defense posture. For years, Tokyo tried to avoid saying anything too explicit about Taiwan's security. They'd talk about peace and stability across the strait, but they avoided drawing a bright line between Taiwan's fate and Japan's own. Prime Minister Takaichi changed that calculus with her comments earlier this month, and now this missile deployment turns that idea into something physical, a real permanent military installation placed almost within eyesight of Taiwan. From China's perspective, this is exactly the kind of regional tightening that they feared.

Japan is drawn closer to the U.S. on joint deterrence, strengthening ties with Taiwan, and building out the infrastructure that would allow it to respond quickly in a crisis. And once a missile unit is on Yonoguni, China knows it won't be taken off. This becomes part of the new normal in the region. So, what happens next? Well, China will almost certainly respond with more military presence around Japan's islands, more air incursions into Japan's air defense zones, more naval patrols in the waters between Taiwan and Okinawa and more drone flights probing Japanese radar coverage. Japan, in turn, may decide that if a missile unit makes sense on Yonaguni, well, then additional batteries on nearby islands like Ishigaki or Miyako makes sense as well.

And you can expect the U.S. to quietly expand intelligence sharing as these systems come online, especially early warning data that helps track Chinese missile launches or aircraft movements. And all of this raises the stakes of any confrontation over Taiwan. If China were to move against the island, Japan would be pulled in almost immediately, not because it wants war, but because its territory, its citizens, and now its military assets sit directly in the potential conflict zone. Japan's decision does represent something of a turning point. The distance between Japan and Taiwan isn't just geographical anymore, it's strategic. And Beijing is reacting like a country, that understands that the regional map may be shifting under its feet.

Coming up next, an underwater cleanup crew in Wales surfaces with something far more serious than litter, a suspected Russian tracking device. I'll be right back. Hey, Mike Baker here, with a message from my friends over at Tri-Tales beef. All right, here's the deal. Triedales Premium Beef, a terrific fifth-generation Texas ranching family, is running their biggest Black Friday event of the year. You've got to check out Triedails.

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How many discounts will you stack up? Tap the banner or visit usa.com slash auto discounts. Restrictions apply. Welcome back to the afternoon bulletin. What began as an ordinary litter cleanup dive off the Welsh coast turned into a national security discovery for the United Kingdom when volunteer diversed drivers recovered what defense experts suspect is Russian surveillance hardware. Divers from an organization named Neptune's army of rubbish cleaners. And you ask yourself, is there an acronym? There sure is. It's NARC, NARC. Well, they barely settled into the routine when the dive took an unexpected turn. Instead of the usual plastic bottles and lost tackle that they pull from the seabed, Volunteers spotted a metal cylinder wedged deep into a rocky gully,

the kind of find that doesn't blend in with the usual debris. At first, the dive team tried to explain it away. Maybe it was part of an old navigational marker, maybe some long-lost industrial scrap. But the longer they studied it, the more the internals pointed towards something far more deliberate. Its wiring wasn't random, and the interior layout wasn't the usual. jumble of marine debris. It was engineered. And as they compared it with examples they'd seen in defense literature, the device began to resemble a sonoboy, that's a combination of the words sonar and buoy, an underwater acoustic sensor that navies used to track submarine movements.

Given Russia's recent behavior around British waters, that possibility didn't feel far-fetched. Following protocol, the organization contacted port authorities and a former Royal Navy colleague before elevating the find to H.M. Coast Guard. The battered 4-foot-30-pound device was carefully extracted from the gullig, and once photos reached defense analysts, the consensus formed quickly. Independent defesa experts say they're confident that the object is a Russian hydroacoustic sonoboi, the same type typically deployed by Russia's T.U.142M Long Range Maritime Patrol aircraft, say that two times fast. The devices fitted orange outer sleeve, generally marked with a serial number, was missing, mirroring the condition of several other

Russian devices that have been recovered across Europe. That context matters because the pattern is becoming increasingly difficult to dismiss. Nearly identical Russian sonoboies have washed offshore in the UK and Ireland, Lithuania, and in Russia's own Novosibirski region in recent years. The defense experts note the lack of marine growth on the Welsh find, and that's a sign that it was deployed recently, rather than some Cold War relic that Moscow could casually explain away. The discovery also arrived in the midst, of course, of concerns about Russian activity beneath the waves. As we reported last week, UK Defense Secretary John Healy confirmed that the Russian signals intelligence vessel, the Yantar, had been operating just beyond British territorial waters.

And while Moscow says Yantar is merely a research vessel, nothing to see here, Western governments have long pointed to its advanced undersea capabilities, viewing it as an intelligence platform designed to map and probe critical undersea communications cables. The Russian embassy insisted, predictably, that Moscow is, quote, not interested in British underwater communications. Of course, they're not. No interest whatsoever, even as Russian surveillance hardware continues appearing along European coastlines and Russian vessels like Yantar operate at the very edge of UK waters. But the Russians have no interest in all that communications information. None whatsoever. And that, my friends, is the PDB afternoon bulletin for Monday, the 24th of November. Now, if you have any questions or comments,

please reach out to me at PDB at thefirsttv.com. And to listen to the show ad free, well, that's very simple to do, just become a premium member of the president's daily brief by visiting PDB premium.com. I'm Mike Baker, and I'll be back tomorrow. Until then, stay informed. Stay safe. Stay cool. Hey, Mike Baker here with a message from our pals over at Birch Gold Group. Now, it is that time of year again. You say, what time of year is that? Well, it's the one time of year that Birch Gold Group gives away free gold with every

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