When Ian Sullivan fights a war over Taiwan on the side of the Taiwanese and their allies, he loses big. But the severity of his defeat belies just how close the fighting is until the very end.
The decisive battle isn’t on the ground or the sea or in the air, according to Sullivan. It’s online. Chinese hackers delay American reinforcements just long enough for Beijing’s troops to flatten Taipei.
Sullivan’s war isn’t real, of course. It’s a simulation based on Next War: Taiwan, a tabletop war game from GMT Games.
But as a simulation, it’s a surprising one. Despite decades of intensive modernization, a bold—some might say “reckless”—brute-force strategy and a firepower advantage in key phases of the fighting, China loses many of the most important pitched battles.
China ultimately wins the war not because it dominates the battlefield, but because it manages to delay U.S. reinforcements—oh, and it’s willing to wreck Taipei, kill countless civilians and target Taiwanese politicians.
— Read on www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2021/07/06/how-to-lose-a-war-with-china-over-taiwan-get-hacked-panic/