The United States intelligence community is urging caution over alarms about a potential Chinese strike on Taiwan, emphasizing there is no “fixed timeline” for action, according to reporting by the Wall Street Journal. Analysts and scholars, however, warn that the absence of a set deadline should not be mistaken for a lack of strategy. Eyck Freymann, in his new book Defending Taiwan: A Strategy to Prevent War with China, argues that Beijing is executing a slow-motion campaign of attrition aimed at wearing down Taipei and its allies rather than launching an immediate military assault.
Freymann describes a “campaign of exhaustion” consisting of constant air incursions, cyberattacks on Taiwan’s infrastructure, and a sustained military presence near its coast. Cultural messaging reinforces the narrative, with state-sanctioned media portraying unification as historically inevitable and morally righteous, signaling a coordinated push to normalize coercion. The goal, he says, is to make resistance feel prohibitively costly, potentially compelling Taiwan and Washington to concede.
The Wall Street Journal notes that this strategy challenges traditional U.S. deterrence models. For decades, American military supremacy has stabilized the Asia-Pacific, but China’s rapid military buildup is narrowing that edge. Freymann argues that the U.S. must adopt a multidimensional approach, integrating military strength, economic leverage, technological leadership, and diplomatic influence into a coherent plan. This includes “avalanche decoupling,” a concept aimed at making conflict economically catastrophic for China, and maintaining dominance in critical technologies such as semiconductors and artificial intelligence.
The stakes are high. Failure to deter Beijing could destabilize the global economy, fracture U.S. alliances, and allow China to reshape regional and global power structures. Freymann and others stress that Washington should use the intelligence community’s “no fixed timeline” assessment as a window to strengthen deterrence, rather than as a signal to relax.
Meanwhile, civil-defense efforts in Taiwan are ramping up, preparing the island’s population for potential conflict, while the broader U.S.-China technology struggle intensifies. The Wall Street Journal highlights cases such as the arrest of Super Micro co-founder Wally Liaw, accused of helping Chinese customers acquire $2.5 billion in high-powered Nvidia AI servers, underscoring the intersection of economic, technological, and security dimensions in the cross-strait rivalry.
Experts caution that without an integrated U.S. strategy addressing both conventional and nonmilitary coercion, China’s long-term plan may advance unimpeded. As Freymann notes, the objective is not simply survival but making the cost of conflict permanently unthinkable, a challenge that requires urgent coordination across military, economic, and technological domains.
