Daily Brief: 01 January 2026
China's 2027 Taiwan deadline approaches as three US deterrence systems crack. Sahel jihadists now outgovern the military regimes that expelled Western allies for Russian mercenaries.
Indo-Pacific | Defence | Three critical systems show stress fractures ahead of China’s 2027 Taiwan readiness deadline
Situation
CIA Director William Burns has confirmed Xi Jinping ordered military readiness to seize Taiwan by 2027, creating a closing window where three deterrence pillars face simultaneous pressure. US strategic ambiguity shows structural flaws as Navy maintenance rates remain at 67% while Chinese cyber operations embed deeper into American infrastructure.
Taiwan’s semiconductor shield weakens as CHIPS Act investments signal Washington considers the island’s capture survivable. TSMC’s Arizona fabs demonstrate advanced manufacturing can relocate, reducing Taiwan’s indispensability.
Allied resolve fractures along economic lines. South Korean semiconductor exports to China fell 13.7% after October 2022 export controls, creating chaebol lobbying pressure against alliance coherence. Samsung’s $18.87 billion Xi’an investment becomes a hostage to Chinese leverage.
Context
The conventional analysis focuses on individual pressure points, missing the reflexive nature of the system. Beijing watches Washington watching Tokyo watching Seoul watching Washington—wobbles anywhere propagate everywhere. Strategic ambiguity’s domestic function preserves presidential maneuver room but creates credibility gaps that compound over time.
Taiwan’s silicon shield emerged from industrial policy, not defense strategy. The paradox: every hedge against Taiwan’s loss—Arizona fabs, domestic Chinese capacity—undermines the deterrent value of Taiwan’s indispensability. The shield works only if Taiwan remains irreplaceable.
Japan’s ¥9 trillion defense budget and standoff missile capabilities represent real transformation, but constitutional constraints and economic dependencies create what appears as deliberation but functions as paralysis when decisive action becomes necessary.
Trajectory
The physics of pressure suggest the weakest point will fail suddenly, not gradually. By 2027, American fabs will produce chips but not enough to replace Taiwan. Chinese capability peaks while US force posture improvements cannot close the gap before the deadline.
The temporal squeeze matters most. Taiwan’s 30-year accumulation of semiconductor expertise faces a 3-5 year reincarnation lag in alternative production. This creates maximum vulnerability: Taiwan’s shield weakening, alternatives not viable, allied resolve internally contradicted by economic interests.
Identifying which system fractures first may be the decade’s most consequential analytical task. The answer determines whether deterrence fails through visible degradation or sudden collapse.
Africa | Security | Sahel jihadist groups outperform state governments in taxation and service delivery across territories larger than European nations
Situation
Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger’s military governments control less territory today despite expelling Western forces and deploying Russian mercenaries. The central Sahel now accounts for half of global terrorism deaths, with jihadist organizations operating functioning tax systems and governance structures across vast areas.
Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) controls nearly half of Burkina Faso and has expanded across Mali and Niger. These groups collect zakat, protection fees, and market levies through networks that reach villages where state tax collectors never venture, generating sustainable revenue from artisanal gold mining and trade route taxation.
The 2020-2023 military coups promised sovereignty would deliver security. Violence has instead accelerated southward toward coastal West Africa.
Context
Sahelian states inherited colonial administrative structures optimized for extraction, not service delivery. Jihadist organizations identified this governance gap and filled it with superior fiscal contracts—predictable services in exchange for predictable taxation at 10-15% of production.
This represents a fundamental inversion of counterinsurgency logic. When insurgents generate sustainable revenue from populations they govern, states must outcompete them in service delivery rather than simply cutting external funding. The same smuggling routes moving Sahelian gold to coastal export hubs return with Libyan weapons, creating bidirectional supply chains under jihadist control.
The three military governments’ withdrawal from ECOWAS and formation of the Alliance of Sahel States constitutes West Africa’s most significant security restructuring since independence—a controlled experiment in whether sovereignty assertion can substitute for institutional capacity.
Trajectory
The juntas face a temporal trap: exiting French architecture happens immediately while building indigenous capacity takes decades. This vulnerability window is precisely where jihadist expansion accelerates.
Success in the Sahel’s ungoverned spaces creates a replicable model for similar regions globally. The franchise system’s ability to adapt locally while maintaining broader networks offers insurgent movements a scalable alternative to traditional state-building.
Coastal West African states now confront spillover from territories where alternative governance has proven more effective than state authority—a challenge that conventional security assistance has consistently failed to address.
Yesterday’s Assessments
Until tomorrow.
