In the months leading up to the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. intelligence community’s alarms were blaring. By late 2021, analysts were almost certain of Russia’s intent to dramatically escalate. A flurry of statements and de-classified intelligence attempted to mobilize action in the face of a potentially dire invasion. In the public sphere, organizations using open-sourced intelligence noticed conspicuous preparations, including blood drives and pontoon bridges.
Despite overwhelming evidence presented by the intelligence community, media, and open-source researchers, Ukrainian leadership was skeptical. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy worried Western warnings would hurt the Ukrainian economy and cause social instability. It was not until just hours before Russian forces crossed the border that Zelenskyy acknowledged the risk and ordered earnest preparations to begin. While the tactical warning achieved by Ukraine was sufficient to prevent the complete destruction of its air fleet and air defense network, Ukraine would have fared far better had it heeded Washington’s warnings weeks before.
An important lesson from this episode is the difficulty of communicating risk to societies already living under latent but perpetual fear of invasion and diagnosing intent in strategic warning. Nowhere in the world is this lesson more relevant than in the Taiwan-U.S. security relationship. China has been watching Ukraine closely, taking its own notes. There is little doubt Beijing has learned much not only from Russia’s failure to conceal its activity in the lead-up to the invasion – but also from how long Ukrainian society took to accept the reality of invasion and mobilize in response to it.
Currently, the way that the United States and Taiwan have approached messaging about risk is wrong. Even if Washington had clear knowledge of a Chinese plan to invade, how would it communicate risk to Taiwan when the ceaseless, existential, “five alarm fire” has been anything but?
The practice of talking down to the Taiwanese public must end. Despite extensive discourse about invasion threats, polling has consistently shown that Taiwanese citizens maintain different threat perceptions from those assessed by Washington. Instead of dismissing these views, U.S. policymakers need to understand why this disconnect exists. The true risk is that if the United States and Taiwan continue on this course and the time for true panic arises, Taipei, and more importantly, the people of Taiwan, aren’t likely to answer the phone.
Essential to Washington’s complicated relationship with Taiwan is the messaging that occurs within the United States. There is no shortage of articles explaining why Taiwan matters, or even why it really, really matters. There are countless definitive remedies prescribing what Taiwan needs and how the United States should go about making it happen. However, much of this discussion is predicated on the ability to predict China’s movements, a flawed assumption that risks disastrous policy failure.
The problem of communicating risk comes from both ends: like Washington, Taipei shares some of the blame. Continuous posting about Air Defense Identification Zone violations by China’s military as a metric to assess Beijing’s movements and predict action is full of confounders. We saw this after the hype over balloon overflights into Taiwanese airspace in late 2023 and early 2024 was shown to be little more than hot air. This pattern does nothing but reinforce the cycle of creating urgency over a potential threat and not following through with any action. Without interdictive action, Taiwan drawing attention to China’s intrusions creates its own problem.
Like the little boy who cried wolf, ringing the alarm bell every time China commits a technical but ultimately quotidian violation sets Taiwan up to miss legitimate threats and erodes U.S. credibility in the region. The problem extends beyond Taiwan-U.S. relations: Risks of a communication failure spill over to regional alliances. South Korea, Japan, and the Philippines have their own security considerations, and there has been skepticism regarding involvement, something that will certainly accelerate should the United States fail to accurately diagnose intent
Perhaps more important for Washington than accurately communicating risk to Taiwan is convincing itself. Policymakers in Washington must have confidence in the assessments of the United States’ own intelligence community. Preparations for an invasion, should the U.S. seek to intervene to defend Taiwan, would be considerable. Air defense would be surged to bases in the region, air wings and forces would have to be dispersed and re-organized, and the U.S. economy must be prepared for considerable shocks due to trade disruption.
These preparations require time, and potentially more importantly, certainty. If, judging an invasion was imminent, the United States was to make rapid changes to its force posture, there is a danger it could reveal its hand in the face of what is actually a drill or feint by China. Should this occur, Washington could give substantial information to the Chinese government, information that would greatly facilitate Beijing’s war-planning and its ability to predict how the United States might react to a blockade or invasion. Perhaps more importantly, it would undermine the credibility of signaling, possibly de-railing attempts to build a coalition to defend Taiwan or send critical humanitarian aid.
Understanding this dilemma, China will likely employ deception to greatly confuse the United States and Taiwan’s ability to predict intent. This could be accomplished by several means, including public disinformation campaigns, fake or distorted movements to confuse geospatial intelligence, or conducting several large-scale drills around the time of the intended action.
Regional allies are crucial for any effective deterrence strategy, but current U.S. messaging often undermines these relationships. When Washington emphasizes the importance of protecting treaty allies against diagnosed threats without decisive action, it erodes credibility with regional partners. These relationships require development through consistent support on issues that matter to them – whether it’s North Korean provocations or South China Sea disputes. Building trust through reliable partnership on these issues will strengthen regional solidarity when it comes to Taiwan.
Avoiding this trap requires a paradigm shift, one that understands the natural restraints of the United States and Taiwan’s ability to shape the behavior of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). It requires policymakers and academics alike to reject falling for media hype campaigns, and reject Beijing’s use of military maneuvers around the island to de-legitimize deterrence. Taiwan, the United States, and its allies in the region should adopt a healthy dose of skepticism in its assessments of PLA action around the island.
The recent confusion stemming from Taiwanese Ministry of National Defense reports of large PLA Navy movements surrounding Taiwan are evidence of this. Building up these drills and exercises as provocations to be responded to only plays into the PLA’s hand by associating these actions as legitimate acts to “dominate” Taiwan.
When everything the PLA does around Taiwan is articulated as a gray-zone tactic that seeks to undermine Taiwan’s ability to defend itself, nothing will ever be considered important enough to drive Taiwanese society into real action – until it’s too late. Preventing this means developing a framework that distinguishes between routine military activities, genuine provocations, and actual invasion preparations. Such clarity would allow for more measured responses and help preserve credibility when raising genuine security concerns.
There are some that argue that because Taiwan isn’t doing enough, or isn’t serious, that Washington should continue its approach. But in emphasizing the need for immediate action and putting constant pressure on the Taiwanese populace creates political instability, which politicians attempt to alleviate with big ticket purchases such as aircraft and naval vessels that won’t survive the early hours of conflict. This strategy detracts from investment in domestic capacity and long-term military reform such as asymmetric defense. This creates a never-ending obsession with getting newer and flashier military technology rather than going to the roots of the problem of military modernization for Taiwan.
These issues highlight a central problem in intelligence analysis: For fear of missing critical warnings and indications of attack, we often get duped by deliberate misinformation and feints. To mitigate the problem, the U.S. intelligence community should focus more on refining assessments than on collecting information. It is clear that there will be signs of a blockade or invasion, as it is simply impossible to hide all levels of preparation. What is less certain, however, is if intent can be parsed through a flood of incoming information and data. The challenge isn’t finding a needle in a haystack. Rather, it is about identifying the right needle in a warehouse of them.
To alleviate some of these problems, the United States should cooperate more closely with Taiwan’s populace and intelligence community. Training pilots and soldiers helps Taiwan’s military but addressing early warning issues and risks upstream is far more effective than stopping the flood with sandbags in front yards. This, along with a shift away from the emphasis on trying to understand and predict gray-zone activity, can provide a more robust analytical capacity and avoid being drawn into Beijing’s misinformation campaigns surrounding intent and risk.