Prediction Not checkable as stated
Xi Jinping's primary window to invade Taiwan is 2028 to 2032
“And if he wants it to be accomplished on his own watch, I think that's going to be the window in his mind, at least 28 through 32. And beyond that, I think, you know, I don't think he's penciled the date certain in the calendar. It's going to be conditions dep…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
U.S. will instruct Taiwan not to fire first during a Chinese invasion
“And Taiwan can't fire first. In fact, we will tell them that you can't fire first on the Chinese because you don't want to be the one that will quote unquote provoke the war.”
Opinion
Alperovitch: Xi Jinping is the best thing that ever happened to America
“I think Xi Jinping has been the best thing that's ever happened to America because he has effectively destroyed the Chinese economy. He has clamped down on innovation. He, through his diplomatic efforts through this wolf warrior diplomacy, alienated so many co…”
Assertion Partly supported
FBI assesses Chinese espionage now surpasses Cold War KGB levels
“The FBI believes that there is more Chinese espionage against this country, both cyber and traditional, than ever during the first Cold War with KGB trying to infiltrate our country, right?”
Insight
Amphibious beach invasion of Taiwan is practically impossible due to terrain
“When you get to the island, you realize that this beach invasion that everyone talks about is basically not doable. The beach beaches are very small. As I mentioned, the waters next to them are very shallow. More importantly, they can be completely far control…”
Opinion
China would need one million troops to successfully occupy Taiwan
“That gives them a huge platform to bring in the massive number of troops that you need to invade this place, Probably at least 600,000 minimum, probably closer to a million realistically to occupy this island of twenty four million people.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
TSMC is considering completely exiting the foundational legacy chip business
“TSMC now that manufactures both advanced and foundational chips is considering getting out of the foundational chips business entirely because U.S. Government is creating this nice monopoly for them in advance.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Alperovitch: US leads China in AI and space, but loses badly in green energy
“Well, so on those three, we're winning in the on those four technologies, we're winning the first three. We're losing badly in energy across the board, right? They're dominating batteries. They're now dominating AVs. They're dominating wind and solar and nucle…”
Opinion
Alperovitch: Legacy Antivirus Firms Were Incapable of Innovation, Prompting CrowdStrike
“I was actually at one of those McAfee and we realized well, at McAfee that these companies were just incapable of innovation. They were born in the 19 eighties you know got very successful, but also stagnated and there was no innovation. They became public com…”
Assertion Supported
Chinese cyber group Volt Typhoon breaches US utilities for conflict disruption
“What's different now, and particularly from China, is in the last couple of years, you had the emergence of this new threat vector that is called Volt Typhoon, which is the Chinese military breaking into organizations, but instead of stealing trade secrets, in…”
Assertion Supported
U.S. intelligence projects China will reach 1,500 nuclear warheads by mid-2030s
“For many decades now, since they acquired nuclear warheads, they've been stable at about 300. And lately, since about four or five years ago, they started to massively build up both the warheads themselves, as well as the missile silos to launch them. And they…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Taiwan conflict would cost global economy $10 trillion and cause depression
“Immediately, right off the bat, the estimates are that you would lose 10 trillion dollars of value in the global economy if there's a conflict over Taiwan. Global depression on levels we haven't seen since the 19 thirties.”
Opinion
Alperovitch: All top-tier AI models are built in the US
“It's not an accident that all the major AI models that are any good are built in this country, nowhere else. Not, not in China, not even in France. Mistral is, is, is a great company, but they're not ChatGPT, they're not Claude, they're not Gemini.”
Assertion Supported
Alperovitch explains the mechanism behind CrowdStrike's massive Windows global outage
“Essentially a faulty update got released. Unfortunately to
The entire population of their customers and a huge percentage of them got impacted, and it went into a perpetual blue screen mode on Windows, where basically it crashes the system, you reboot, it cra…”
Assertion Open · timeframe Dec 2100
Alperovitch: China is losing at least one million people annually
“They're already losing at least a million people a year, and that's only going to accelerate throughout the century.”
Assertion Supported
Alperovitch: Semiconductor equipment is manufactured in only three countries
“All of the equipment that you need to manufacture these chips, whether it's foundational or advanced, is basically built in three places. It's built in America, It's built in Netherlands, the company, SML that many have heard about and in Japan”
Assertion Supported
Only three of the 150 chips in an iPhone are advanced nodes
“Even if you look at your iPhone, there's about 150, 160 chips in that iPhone. Only three of them are advanced. Your processor, your memory, and the baseband from Qualcomm. That talks to the cell tower. Everything else, GPS, screen, power management, battery, a…”
Assertion Supported
Alperovitch: US Municipal Utilities Lack Security Personnel and Cybersecurity Budgets
“Like your typical municipal utility is not going to even have a security person maybe an IT person if you're lucky. Not gonna have a budget for a lot of security technologies. So it's ironic that these are the critical infrastructures that we depend the most f…”
