Episode Details

China v Taiwan: who would win? Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow and director of research at Brookings. He specializes in U.S. defense strategy, the use of military force, and American national security policy.

We discuss

• The limits of scenarios that predict the outcome of a China-Taiwan conflict.
• What are intercontinental rail guns?
• How sports teams that play each other in the same year can have different outcomes - and what this says about predictability.
• Given all this, what’s the point of modelling exercises?

Mike's paper: https://www.brookings.edu/research/can-china-take-taiwan-why-no-one-really-knows/

My paper: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/E2BghQq9pwPgtHgiH/war-between-the-us-and-china-a-case-study-for-epistemic

Outro music: Battle Cry of Freedom by George Root https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bW4ZwyYJYbQ

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