DECODING: Tanks in the Streets of Taipei: the Five-Day Exercise Preparing the Island for the Unthinkable

DECODING: Tanks in the Streets of Taipei: the Five-Day Exercise Preparing the Island for the Unthinkable

Introduction: When peace looks like war

Armored vehicles on civilian avenues

Since June 22, 2026, Taiwan has transformed its urban arteries into combat corridors. Tanks, armored vehicles, columns of soldiers in combat gear have patrolled the streets of Taipei and other cities on the island, to the stunned gaze of passersby. This is not a coup. It is not a Hollywood production. It is a five-day immediate combat readiness exercise, ordered by Taiwan's military command as a direct response to the escalating provocations of China's People's Liberation Army (PLA).

The exercise carries a sober, almost bureaucratic name — "immediate combat readiness" — but its message is anything but discreet. For the first time in years, Taiwan is no longer hiding its war preparations behind diplomatic euphemisms. It is staging them, deliberately, in front of the world's cameras. The signal sent to Beijing, to Washington, and to Indo-Pacific allies is clear: the island will fight.

A response to a threat that no longer hides itself

This spectacular deployment did not occur in a strategic vacuum. It is an explicit response to the "real war" military exercises the PLA conducted in the preceding weeks around the Taiwan Strait. Beijing no longer speaks of routine exercises — its generals now openly use the phrase "real-war-oriented exercises", a martial vocabulary that would have been considered alarmist ten years ago.

The Washington Post of June 22, 2026 described in detail these tanks crossing residential neighborhoods, these soldiers practicing urban infiltration maneuvers, these simulations of critical infrastructure defense. The staging was that of an island preparing not for a distant eventuality, but for a threat knocking at its door. The era of strategic ambiguity is over.

The PLA shows its hand: "real war" exercises

A military rhetoric crossing the Rubicon

The People's Liberation Army has radically changed its vocabulary in recent months. Its spokespersons and generals have abandoned cautious formulations to adopt language that leaves no room for interpretation: "reunification by force is a viable option", "exercises are war rehearsals", "no territory is out of reach". This semantic shift is not trivial. In Chinese strategic culture, words precede actions — and Beijing knows it.

The PLA's recent exercises around the strait included simulations of naval blockades, repeated amphibious landings, coordinated air strikes against fictional targets that bore a striking resemblance to Taiwanese military bases. All accompanied by ballistic missiles sent into maritime exclusion zones carefully chosen for their psychological value. Beijing is no longer testing weapons — it is testing Taiwan's resolve and that of its allies.

The grey-zone doctrine pushed to its limits

Beijing's strategy has for years rested on "grey-zone warfare": aggressive actions that remain below the threshold of open war, sufficiently provocative to erode Taiwanese resolve without triggering a Western military response. Daily incursions into the Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ), intimidating naval maneuvers, massive disinformation campaigns — all instruments designed to psychologically exhaust an encircled island population.

But the escalation of these "real-war-oriented" exercises suggests that Beijing has decided to take a further step. You are no longer in the grey zone when you publicly announce that your maneuvers are invasion rehearsals. Taiwan's government registered this shift in tone and responded with the five-day exercise: a demonstration of operational resilience on the island's own soil, not merely on its territorial waters.

Five days of exercise: what armored vehicles in the streets really mean

The doctrine of total urban defense

The five-day exercise is not reducible to a parade of armored vehicles to impress foreign cameras. It is part of a total defense doctrine that Taiwan has been refining for several years. The core idea is simple but revolutionary for an island democracy: if the PLA lands, every square kilometer of the island must become a defensive battlefield. Every avenue, every building, every bridge — everything must be integratable into a resistance posture.

That is why tanks patrol residential neighborhoods. That is why soldiers conduct maneuvers in commercial spaces and around civilian infrastructure. The objective is to accustom the population to military presence, to map urban defense axes, and above all to signal to Beijing that any invasion would encounter a scorched-earth resistance, not a capitulation in open field. Ukraine provided the lesson — Taiwan has memorized it.

The psychological dimension: familiarizing civilians with the reality of war

Beyond the operational dimension, the exercise serves a crucial psychological objective. Democracies tend to live in the comfort of peace until the moment it ceases abruptly. Taiwan, under growing pressure for several years, has decided to pull its citizens out of this protective lethargy. By seeing tanks in their streets, helicopters overhead, military columns in their neighborhoods, Taiwanese people are concretely experiencing what war preparedness means.

Surveys conducted on the island reveal a significant trend: the proportion of Taiwanese willing to fight to defend their territory increased following 2022, when Russia's invasion of Ukraine suddenly made concrete a threat that had seemed abstract. The five-day exercise capitalizes on this shift in mindset. It transforms the will to resist into a defense culture, into a collective reflex, into mental preparation as much as physical.

RIMPAC and Valiant Shield: the regional maritime context

A Pacific bristling with allied warships

The Taiwanese land exercise is not unfolding in isolation. At the same time, the Indo-Pacific is witnessing one of the largest allied naval demonstrations of force in decades. Exercise RIMPAC 2026 (Rim of the Pacific), which officially began on June 24, brought together approximately 40 warships, 25,000 personnel, and 31 nations in Hawaiian waters and beyond, running through July 31. Simultaneously, exercise Valiant Shield 2026, launched on June 22, mobilizes American forces and allies across the Indo-Pacific with a particular focus on high-intensity conflict scenarios.

The convergence of these three exercises — Taiwanese, RIMPAC, Valiant Shield — is not a scheduling coincidence. It is a deliberate strategic coordination aimed at sending a coherent message to Beijing: resistance to aggressive action will not be isolated, will not be Taiwan's alone, but collective, naval, aerial, and determined. Deterrence is built through actions, not declarations.

The strategic message sent to Beijing

To understand why these simultaneous exercises matter, one must grasp the logic of extended deterrence. Beijing constantly calculates the cost of military action against Taiwan against the expected benefits. Every allied exercise demonstrating rapid power projection capabilities, every American warship training to operate in contested maritime spaces, every simulated coordinated strike — all of this enters the Chinese calculation.

Analysts at ThinkChina noted on June 25, 2026 that naval density in the western Pacific is reaching levels unseen since the Cold War. Thirty-one nations participating in RIMPAC — that is a coalition far exceeding the simple bilateral US-Taiwan framework. It is a signal that any aggression against Taiwan would have repercussions in capitals from Sydney to Tokyo, from Seoul to Ottawa. The strategic cost of an invasion becomes difficult to quantify — and that is precisely the objective.

The European warning: finally a voice that counts

European powers break their silence

On June 24, 2026, according to a report from Yahoo News, the leading European powers issued a rare and explicit warning about the threat China poses to Taiwan. This is not the first time Europe has spoken on the issue, but the tone and precision of this warning mark a departure from the usual diplomatic caution. European capitals specifically named the People's Republic of China as a source of destabilization in the Indo-Pacific — a gesture that would have been unthinkable five years ago.

This evolution reflects a painful but necessary awakening. Europe long treated the Taiwan question as an American-Asian problem, external to its immediate concerns. The war in Ukraine shattered that illusion. If a revisionist power can invade a European country in 2022, another revisionist power can invade an Indo-Pacific democracy in 2026 or beyond. The geography of security no longer has airtight regional borders.

The credibility of the warning: words versus capabilities

The burning question is that of credibility. A diplomatic warning has value only if it is backed by power projection capabilities and the political will to use them. Yet Europe, despite real progress on defense spending since 2022, remains structurally limited in its ability to project power into the Indo-Pacific. French and British navies can deploy naval groups in the region — and they have. But the scale bears no comparison with that of the United States.

Yet the European warning has a symbolic and political value that exceeds its raw military capabilities. It breaks the fiction of a Europe indifferent to Taiwan's fate. It complicates Beijing's diplomatic calculation, which can no longer treat the affair as a bilateral Sino-American conflict. It also legitimizes Taiwan's efforts to diversify its international support beyond the sole American umbrella. In geopolitics, words sometimes precede actions — and sometimes they advantageously replace them.

The maritime quarantine simulation: the most feared scenario

Tabletop exercise: simulating the unthinkable to make it thinkable

Alongside the ground military exercises, Taiwan conducted a tabletop exercise reconstructing the scenario of a "quarantine" imposed by Chinese forces on maritime access, according to Bloomberg of June 25, 2026. This type of exercise — bringing together political decision-makers, military officers, and civilian experts around a table to simulate crises — is valuable precisely because it forces participants to articulate responses to situations that the emotions and urgencies of the moment would make difficult to handle.

The "quarantine" is the scenario that Beijing theoretically prefers over a direct invasion. Instead of a massive amphibious landing — a risky operation, costly in lives, and potentially triggering a direct American response — China could opt for a gradual naval blockade, cutting Taiwan off from its energy imports, food, and electronic components. An island of 23 million inhabitants entirely dependent on its imports would then be slowly strangled, without the act of war being legally incontestable.

Taiwan's systemic vulnerabilities in the face of a blockade

Taiwan imports 97% of its energy. It depends on maritime routes for virtually all of its raw materials and foodstuffs. In the event of an effective naval blockade, the island's strategic reserves — estimated at a few weeks for hydrocarbons — would rapidly deplete. The electronics industries, including TSMC and its chip factories upon which the entire world depends, would shut down for lack of components and energy.

This catastrophic scenario is what the tabletop simulation modeled. Participants had to answer brutal questions: how long can Taiwan hold under quarantine? At what point would internal pressures become unbearable? What would the American response be to a quarantine that is not technically a "war"? How would regional allies — Japan, Australia, Philippines — react? The conclusions of this exercise were not made public, but the mere fact of conducting it is revealing of the Taiwanese mindset.

Beijing's retaliation against the 1260H list: technological escalation

Washington extends its designation list — Beijing strikes back

On June 26, 2026, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) published its China-Taiwan update, revealing that Beijing responded to the American expansion of the "1260H list" — designating Chinese entities linked to the military — with export controls and by prohibiting Chinese government entities from dealing with designated American companies. This commercial and technological escalation is inseparable from the military tensions around Taiwan.

The 1260H list is an American legislative tool that imposes restrictions on Chinese companies deemed too close to the PLA. Its recent expansion targets new entities in the sectors of semiconductors, artificial intelligence and dual-use military technologies. Beijing perceives these measures as a systemic economic attack aimed at slowing its military modernization — and responds in kind, transforming commerce into a battlefield.

The technology war as an extension of military competition

This technological escalation reveals the depth of the Sino-American rivalry. It is no longer simply about military tensions around the Taiwan Strait, but a systemic competition for mastery of the technologies that will define military superiority in the 21st century: advanced chips, artificial intelligence, autonomous weapons systems, quantum communications. Tomorrow's war is being prepared in today's laboratories.

TSMC, the Taiwanese company that manufactures the world's most advanced chips, sits at the heart of this rivalry. Beijing wants its technological capabilities — either by developing them itself (with delay), or by controlling them through a takeover of Taiwan. This is one of the fundamental reasons why the island is so strategically important, beyond its geographical position. Whoever controls TSMC controls the electronic brain of the world economy.

The total defense doctrine: the Ukrainian lesson applied

From Kyiv to Taipei: how a democracy survives aggression

The five-day exercise draws directly from the Ukrainian experience. Since February 2022, the world has watched how a nation that appeared poorly prepared resisted invasion by a supposedly overwhelming military power. The factors behind this resistance are now well known: civilian population morale, society's capacity to mobilize, modern weaponry provided by determined allies, and above all a military doctrine adapted to the terrain and the asymmetric nature of the conflict.

Taiwan has drawn multiple lessons from this conflict. The first: the initial resistance counts more than anything else. The first hours and days of an invasion often determine the long-term outcome. If the PLA thinks it can decapitate the Taiwanese government in a few hours and present the world with a fait accompli, the five-day exercise demonstrates that the chain of command is decentralized, forces are dispersed, resistance is prepared to last. There will be no quick victory for Beijing — not if Taiwan has anything to say about it.

The limits of the Ukrainian analogy

The analogy with Ukraine has its limits, however, and it would be intellectually dishonest not to acknowledge them. Taiwan is an island — it cannot receive military aid via land routes as Ukraine did through Poland. An effective naval blockade could totally isolate it. Moreover, China's military power is incomparably greater than Russia's in 2022 — it possesses a modern navy, a considerable air force, and a ballistic missile capability that exceeds what Russia has used in Ukraine.

These differences do not mean that Taiwanese resistance is doomed to fail. They mean that its success depends even more radically on rapid and massive external support, on a clear American decision to intervene from the first hours of the conflict, and on an internal preparation that transforms every square meter of the island into a fortress. The five-day exercise works on this last point. The first two depend on decisions that are not made in Taipei.

The American dilemma: ambiguous engagement or clear deterrence

American strategic ambiguity: asset or trap?

For decades, the United States has maintained a policy of strategic ambiguity on Taiwan: selling weapons to the island, maintaining unofficial ties, but refusing to formally guarantee military intervention in case of a Chinese attack. This ambiguity is supposed to deter Beijing from acting, by leaving doubt about the American response, while avoiding provoking China with too explicit a commitment.

In the context of 2026, this policy is showing its limits. Beijing has had time to observe the American response to the invasion of Ukraine — massive aid, but no direct intervention — and may be tempted to bet on a similar response for Taiwan. The five-day exercise is, among other things, a message addressed to Washington: Taiwan is preparing to fight, but it needs to know with what guarantee. Strategic ambiguity reassures diplomats — it leaves soldiers in uncertainty.

Trump and the Pacific: unpredictable calculations

The Trump administration adds a layer of unpredictability to this equation. On one hand, Trump has maintained, even reinforced, arms sales to Taiwan and tightened technological sanctions against China. On the other, his erratic governing style and sometimes contradictory declarations on American commitments abroad create an uncertainty that Beijing reads carefully. A president who can declare that NATO is "obsolete" before claiming a "victory" in a deal with Iran does not inspire unlimited confidence in his Indo-Pacific commitments.

For Taiwan, the lesson is clear: counting on the United States is indispensable but insufficient. Internal preparation, civil resilience, deep territorial defense — these are what the island has direct control over. That is exactly what the five-day exercise aims to strengthen. Better to build one's own fortress than to rely on the promise of a distracted savior.

Regional allies: Japan, Australia, Philippines in the equation

Tokyo: from cautious neutrality to assumed engagement

Japan has in recent years undergone one of the most spectacular strategic transformations of the postwar period. Constrained by its pacifist constitution since 1945, Tokyo has progressively reinterpreted its constitutional constraints to give itself offensive military capabilities — the first in 70 years. The announced doubling of the defense budget to reach 2% of GDP by 2027, the acquisition of deep-strike missiles, the military reinforcement of the Ryūkyū Islands facing Taiwan — all of this draws a Japan actively preparing for the possibility of a regional conflict.

For Taiwan, Japan's transformation is a first-order strategic development. The Ryūkyū Islands, including Okinawa, form a chain less than 100 kilometers from Taiwan's coasts. An active Japanese military base in this region would constitute an irreplaceable logistical support in case of conflict. And Tokyo, aware that the fall of Taiwan would make its own islands the next targets of Beijing, has no intention of watching passively.

Australia and Philippines: the southern flank of Taiwan's defense

Australia, within the framework of the AUKUS pact and its participation in RIMPAC 2026, is strengthening its submarine capabilities and its operational ties with the American and British navies. Canberra has clearly identified China as its primary security concern and is adapting its military posture accordingly. Joint exercises, intelligence sharing, the regular deployment of Australian ships in the South China Sea constitute as many signals to Beijing.

The Philippines present a more complex profile. Manila has signed multiple defense agreements with Washington, granting access to several additional military bases on its territory within the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement. But the Philippines remain economically very dependent on China and permanently navigate between attraction and repulsion. In case of conflict around Taiwan, the Philippines' position would be determinative — and always uncertain. In Indo-Pacific geopolitics, uncertainty is a permanent given.

Taiwan's defense industry: preparing the island to fight alone

Toward strategic autonomy in armaments

Taiwan has been engaged for several years in an ambitious strategic autonomy program in armaments production. The island now manufactures its own submarines — the IDS (Indigenous Defense Submarine) program produced its first unit in 2023 — as well as long-range cruise missiles, stealth corvettes and drone systems. This military industrialization aims to reduce import dependency in case of blockade and to increase asymmetric deterrence capacity.

The Hsiung Feng IIE and Yun Feng missiles give Taiwan a strike capability against mainland Chinese targets — a significant doctrinal shift that transforms the island from a purely defensive power into an actor capable of threatening military infrastructure on the mainland. This deterrence through counter-strike threat is directly inspired by the Ukrainian strategy of strikes on Russian refineries. If you attack my territory, your territory is not safe — that is the logic.

Remaining capability gaps

Despite this progress, significant capability gaps remain. Taiwan's navy remains inferior in number and tonnage to that of the PLA. The island's missile defense, though improved by the acquisition of Patriot and THAAD systems, would be overwhelmed by a massive saturation of ballistic and cruise missiles. And above all, Taiwan's capacity to maintain its energy supplies under a blockade remains its structural Achilles' heel.

The five-day exercise does not solve these gaps — no exercise can. But it develops the resilience culture that will allow Taiwanese forces to maximize the use of their existing capabilities, to improvise under pressure, and to hold out long enough for allies to intervene. In modern warfare, the duration of initial resistance is often more determinative than the raw balance of forces.

The ISW and the balance-of-power analysis: what numbers don't say

Modeling the China-Taiwan conflict according to think tanks

The Institute for the Study of War regularly publishes analyses on the evolving balance of power between China and Taiwan. Its update of June 26, 2026 reveals not only Beijing's commercial counter-offensive against the 1260H list, but also the state of preparation of both parties. These analyses aggregate data from multiple open sources — satellite imagery, official statements, observed exercises — to build an overall picture.

Simulations conducted by institutions like the Center for Strategic and International Studies have modeled several scenarios for a Taiwan invasion. Their conclusions, published in 2023 and confirmed since, underlined that in most direct invasion scenarios, the United States and its allies could repel the PLA — but at a very high human and material cost. The five-day exercise aims precisely to improve these probabilities, to reduce these costs, to make Beijing's calculation even less favorable.

What the models do not capture

Mathematical models have their limits. They quantify missiles, ships, aircraft. They calculate the probabilities of air defense penetration. But they do not capture the fighting will of a civilian population, the genius of a commander under pressure, the capacity of a nation to reinvent itself under bombardment. Ukraine demonstrated that these intangible factors can overturn all of the models' forecasts.

That is why the five-day exercise — with its tanks in the streets, its soldiers in civilian neighborhoods, its deliberate staging of imminent war — is worth as much as the most advanced weapons acquisitions. It builds something that numbers do not measure: a resistance culture, a collective reflex, a determination that takes root in bodies and minds before the first shots are fired. Future wars may be won as much in minds as on battlefields.

Toward 2027: possible scenarios according to analysts

The dreaded temporal horizon

The year 2027 is cited by several American analysts and officials as the temporal horizon at which China's military capabilities could allow it to consider military action against Taiwan with an improved probability of success. This date coincides with the centennial of the People's Liberation Army — a symbolically charged milestone for Xi Jinping's regime. It also coincides with the projected completion of several major naval modernization programs.

This horizon is not a certainty. Beijing will not trigger a war simply because the calendar permits — the economic cost of a conflict, the uncertainties about the American response, the risks of a prolonged engagement all favor caution. But it fully justifies the urgency of Taiwanese preparations. If 2027 is a possible window, then 2026 is exactly the moment to consolidate defenses, train troops, accustom the population — which is precisely what the five-day exercise does.

Signals that could precede an escalation

Analysts agree on several precursor warning indicators of military action: an intensification of PLA exercises without notice, unusual amphibious troop movements, official rhetoric on "reunification" crossing a new threshold, or an internal crisis in China pushing Xi Jinping to seek a nationalist diversion externally. None of these signals are currently flashing bright red — but several are at orange. The five-day exercise is a proportionate response to a threat level that has risen one notch.

What is certain is that the exercise of June 2026 is not the last of its kind. If current trends persist — escalating Chinese provocations, maintained Taiwanese resolve, American and allied support — these urban military displays will become a constant feature of Taiwanese life. Like Israeli conscription, like Finnish exercises, like Ukrainian air raid sirens before 2022. An encircled democracy learns to live in a state of permanent vigilance.

The semiconductor diplomacy: TSMC as a de facto geopolitical shield

The microchip as strategic deterrence

In all of this military equation, one silent actor plays a role of involuntary deterrence: TSMC, the Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturer that produces the world's most advanced chips. The company alone represents more than 90% of global manufacturing capacity for chips smaller than 7 nanometers. Without it, the smartphones, computers, weapons systems and autonomous vehicles of the Western world would shut down within months of an interruption in its production. This is a technological dependency that transcends borders and alliances.

This reality creates what strategists call the "silicon shield": the idea that Beijing would hesitate to destroy or conquer Taiwan precisely because a disruption of TSMC would affect its own economy, its own technology industries, its own military ambitions. China remains partially dependent on Taiwanese chips for its advanced weapons systems. Touching TSMC is potentially shooting oneself in the technological foot.

The limits of the silicon shield against Xi's ambitions

Xi Jinping has for several years launched a massive technological autonomy program, known as "Made in China 2025", aimed at reducing this dependency on foreign chips. Billions of yuan have been invested in domestic foundries like SMIC. The results remain disappointing relative to the ambitions: SMIC is at least five to ten years behind TSMC on the most advanced technologies. This lag constitutes a real brake on any military adventure.

But the silicon shield has its limits. If Xi Jinping decides that national reunification outweighs economic considerations — a nationalist calculation that his regime could impose on its population — then rational economic logic gives way before ideology. The five-day exercise in Taiwan does not rest on the hope that Beijing will be reasonable. It rests on the certainty that if Beijing is not reasonable, the island will fight. Both logics must coexist for deterrence to hold.

Conclusion: The island that refuses to die in its sleep

Five days that are worth a message

The five-day exercise that put tanks in the streets of Taipei is not a sign of imminent war. It is precisely the opposite: it is an act of deterrence, a demonstration of resolve that aims to make war less likely by making it more costly for the aggressor. Taiwan is telling Beijing: we are ready, we will fight, you will not find an island that surrenders at the first salvos. It is a sober, realistic message, deeply rooted in the lessons of recent history.

The context is one of an Indo-Pacific undergoing full strategic recomposition: RIMPAC bringing together 31 nations in Pacific waters, Valiant Shield practicing high-intensity scenarios, a Europe breaking its silence on the Chinese threat, regional allies consolidating their capabilities. Taiwan is no longer alone in this collective show of force. The strategic isolation Beijing dreamed of — an island alone against a continent — is dissolving.

What the world must retain

What Taiwan is accomplishing with its readiness exercises deserves the attention and respect of every democracy. It demonstrates that an open, pluralistic, innovative society can also be resolutely capable of defending itself. It proves that freedom is not incompatible with vigilance, that democracy can integrate national defense into its culture without sacrificing its fundamental values. It offers the West a model of democratic resilience that we all need.

The world watches Taiwan with an anxiety that too few translate into concrete commitment. This five-day exercise is an invitation — an invitation to choose sides before choices are imposed by the force of events. The tanks in the streets of Taipei are rolling for Taiwan. But their message resonates far beyond the strait. It is addressed to each and every one of us.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's transparency note

Who I am and my acknowledged biases

I am a columnist, not a field reporter. I have never set foot in Taiwan, I speak neither Mandarin nor Taiwanese. My analysis is built from open sources — English-language media, think tank publications, official statements — which I cross-reference and interpret with my personal judgment, inevitably imperfect. I fully own my pro-democratic positioning: I believe democracies are worth defending, and this bias colors my writing. I flag it so that you can read it with full awareness.

I am convinced that China represents the primary long-term threat to the liberal international order. This is not a conviction I claim to have proven irrefutably — it is an analytical judgment grounded in observing Chinese foreign policy for a decade. Other respectable analysts arrive at different conclusions. I invite you to read widely and form your own opinion.

What I don't know and the limits of my analysis

I do not have access to the classified intelligence that informs government decisions regarding Taiwan. I do not know what the Taiwanese tabletop simulations actually concluded. I do not know with certainty whether 2027 is truly a critical date or an analytical projection that events may well supersede. Xi Jinping's actual intentions on Taiwan — whether he truly wants to trigger a war or is using the threat as a pressure instrument — remain fundamentally opaque from the outside.

My analysis rests on sources dated June 22 to 26, 2026, primarily the Washington Post, ThinkChina, Bloomberg, Yahoo News and the ISW. I invent no facts, attribute no statement I have not read, and flag my uncertainties as they arise. If factual errors slip in, they are unintentional and I commit to correcting them upon request.

Sources

Primary sources

Washington Post — Taiwan launches a 5-day combat readiness exercise against Chinese maneuvers — June 22, 2026

Bloomberg — Taiwan conducts a maritime quarantine simulation exercise by Chinese forces — June 25, 2026

Institute for the Study of War (ISW) — China-Taiwan Update: June 26, 2026 — June 26, 2026

ThinkChina — Why the Pacific is filling with warships: RIMPAC and the new military contest — June 25, 2026

Secondary sources

Yahoo News — European powers issue a rare warning about the Chinese threat against Taiwan — June 24, 2026

Ground News / Bloomberg — Context on Russia's war and global military spending — June 23, 2026