Niall Ferguson, Columnist

The Four Mysteries of Pelosi’s Troublesome Taiwan Trip

Tensions over the island haven’t been this high since 1996, and a visit by the House speaker could push China to the brink.

July 29, 2022 at 9:34 PM UTC

By Niall Ferguson

Niall Ferguson is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and the author, most recently, of “Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe.” He is a columnist for The Free Press.

Heated summer.
Photographer: Ting Shen/Bloomberg

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“Taiwan will be next. You won’t have any computer chips. They’ll blow them off the face of the earth.”

Well, who said that? My question, dear readers, is part of the mystery of the Taiwan Strait. And who better to unlock that mystery than Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, whose summer trip to Asia may well include a stop in Taiwan? Indeed, she could already be on her way there as I write.