Sir, I think that there's certainly a great concern that it will happen. I think what you're going to see—and it's already started—is the effort to turn Taiwan into a porcupine, as they say, which is to provide it with enough capacity that it would be very expensive for the Chinese to invade.
I think there is a rethinking within Taiwan about some of the weaponry they need in order to ensure that porcupine capacity. Much of that capacity, of course, will come from the United States, but the Taiwanese have already begun things like construction of their new submarines, for example, and anti-ballistic-missile defence.
I think that will be what they will do, in the belief that the best deterrence.... In NATO, we feel the best deterrence to Russian aggression is strong defensive capacity that will force the Russians, in the case of NATO, to think twice before going into a NATO country. The same would apply to Taiwan.
If the worst should happen, there is considerable division, sir, as you probably know, within American thinking-group circles about how the United States will respond and its capacity to respond. Much, of course, would depend on what the Chinese did and whether they were taking out some of the American bases in Guam and Okinawa, for example. You can be sure the United States will have some form of response—kinetic, but I think cyber is increasingly going to enter into the equation.
You hope it doesn't get there, but I think the best approach now is to help Taiwan create sufficient deterrent power so that Chinese generals think twice and advise Xi Jinping that this is going to be extremely difficult and costly.
I think the American signals—and I'm quite confident that President Biden said this to Xi Jinping yesterday—are that if they were to proceed, there would be a response from the United States that would do great harm to China.