Yesterday might have been the most consequential day for Taiwan in years, yet - as often - literally no Western media covered it (I checked, only Taiwanese media did).

There are many ways to wage war but the best way, or so the Chinese doctrine famously goes, is to conquer the enemy's strategy, not their army. Or, put another way, to win without fighting.

Imagine for the sake of argument that you're a president and your intelligence chief walks into your office to inform you that, for the better part of the past decade, your government’s top national security advisors, even your top aide, have been feeding your adversary every classified briefing, every military plan, every diplomatic strategy.

Every “secret” weapon, every tactical advantage, every backup plan, your every thoughts - they knew it all in real time.

How would you feel in that moment? You'd surely feel betrayed, but more than that - completely outmaneuvered before the game even began, utterly exposed and defenseless. Right?

Well, that's exactly what just happened in Taiwan. This isn't a hypothetical scenario - it's literally yesterday's news from Taipei (focustaiwan.tw/society/20250…)

What happened?

Four former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) members were indicted on June 10, 2025 for espionage on behalf of the PRC: Huang Chu-jung (黄取荣), Chiu Shih-yuan (邱世元), Ho Jen-chi (何仁杰), and Wu Shang-yu (吴尚雨).

As a reminder the DPP is the “anti-China“ party in Taiwan, the pro-independence party that’s been in power continuously since 2016.

These people weren't just ordinary party members:

• Wu Shang-yu was one of president Lai Ching-te’s top aides
• Ho Jen-chieh was top aide to Joseph Wu when Wu served as foreign minister (Wu is now National Security Council Secretary-General)
• Chiu Shih-yuan is the former deputy head of the DPP's Taiwan Institute of Democracy, the DPP's own internal think tank

In other words, it's safe to assume that every major Taiwanese defense plan, every diplomatic initiative, every presidential movement, and every strategic assessment has been an open book to Beijing for the better part of a decade.

Sure, it’s possible that this is itself a psyop, that these people are in fact all innocent and that the DPP is waging a paranoid witch hunt.

But even if that were the case, the outcome is virtually the same: China has effectively already won the psychological warfare.

How can Taiwan's military and political leadership ever again have confidence in their own security apparatus? The mere suspicion of such comprehensive penetration at the highest levels of government is enough to paralyze decision-making and destroy the trust essential for effective defense.

It also results in destroying the trust of Taiwan’s partners: seeing this as an American, you can only conclude that you must operate under the assumption that any exchange of classified materials, operational details, or strategic assessments with the government in Taiwan will be on Xi Jinping's desk before the meeting ends. It effectively neutralizes any meaningful defense cooperation.

In other words, the conclusion is devastating for Taiwan: China might have just achieved the ultimate expression of its own strategic doctrine - they have conquered Taiwan's strategy so completely that conquering by fighting becomes unnecessary.

And this isn’t the only immensely consequential recent news for Taiwan.

In fact, yesterday - decidedly quite the eventful day - there was an even more important revelation: China has effectively “broken” the so-called “First Island Chain“.

France has upped the ante in the quest for fusion power by maintaining a plasma reaction for over 22 minutes – a new record. The milestone was reached on February 12 at the Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA) WEST Tokamak reactor.

Achieving the dream of commercial fusion power is the Holy Grail of engineering and has been for 80 years. With a single gram of hydrogen isotopes yielding the energy equivalent of 11 tonnes of coal, a practical fusion reactor would hold the promise of unlimited, clean energy for humanity until the end of time.

Small wonder that billions have been invested by both government and industry in the quest to make fusion power a reality. However, while fusion is relatively easy to achieve in the heart of the sun or in a hydrogen bomb, creating a practical reactor that produces more energy than is put into it is another matter entirely.

The tricky bit isn't to get atoms to fuse. That's a fairly simple lab bench experiment. The problem is creating the right conditions where the fusion reaction is self-sustaining, with a net energy output. That means reaching temperatures of between 100 – 150 million °C (180 – 270 million °F, or 3-5 times hotter than the Sun's core), a pressure of five to 10 atmospheres at the point of reaction, and keeping a high-energy plasma stable for at least 10 seconds.

The CEA seems to have done considerably better than 10 seconds and gone 25% beyond what China achieved in January 2025 with 1,066 seconds. In the latest test, the WEST Tokamak held its reaction for 1,337 seconds.

The purpose of the test wasn't just to keep the plasma reaction going like a stage performer spinning plates. It was also to keep the reaction stable without the components in the reactor facing the plasma becoming eroded or polluted, or malfunctioning.

According to CEA, the next step will be to create even longer reactions that could amount to a combined time of several hours, with the temperature growing increasingly hotter. Though WEST will never become a true commercial reactor, the information gathered there will be used to improve more ambitious machines, like the giant International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) being built in the south of France.

"WEST has achieved a new key technological milestone by maintaining hydrogen plasma for more than twenty minutes through the injection of 2 MW of heating power," said Anne-Isabelle Etienvre, Director of Fundamental Research at the CEA. "Experiments will continue with increased power. This excellent result allows both WEST and the French community to lead the way for the future use of ITER."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he would agree to meet Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin in Turkey on Thursday after U.S. President Donald Trump told him immediately to accept Putin's proposal of direct talks.

The Ukrainian leader had responded guardedly earlier on Sunday after the Russian president, in a night-time televised statement that coincided with prime time in the U.S., proposed that Ukraine and Russia hold direct talks in Istanbul next Thursday, May 15.

It was not clear that Putin had proposed to attend in person, however.

"I will be waiting for Putin in Türkiye on Thursday. Personally. I hope that this time the Russians will not look for excuses," Zelenskiy wrote on X.

Putin's proposal came hours after major European powers demanded on Saturday in Kyiv that Putin agree to an unconditional 30-day ceasefire or face "massive" new sanctions, a position that Trump's Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg endorsed on Sunday.

Zelenskiy too had said Ukraine would be ready for talks with Russia, but only after Moscow agreed to the 30-day ceasefire.

But Trump, who has the power to continue or sever Washington's crucial supply of arms to Ukraine, took a different line.

"President Putin of Russia doesn’t want to have a Cease Fire Agreement with Ukraine, but rather wants to meet on Thursday, in Turkey, to negotiate a possible end to the BLOODBATH. Ukraine should agree to this, IMMEDIATELY," Trump wrote on Truth Social.

"At least they will be able to determine whether or not a deal is possible, and if it is not, European leaders, and the U.S., will know where everything stands, and can proceed accordingly!"

Putin sent Russia's armed forces into Ukraine in February 2022, unleashing a conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands of soldiers and triggered the gravest confrontation between Russia and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

With Russian forces grinding forward, the Kremlin chief has offered few, if any, concessions so far.

In his overnight address, he proposed what he said would be "direct negotiations without any preconditions".

But almost immediately, senior Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters the talks must take into account both an abandoned 2022 draft peace deal and the current situation on the ground.

This language is shorthand for Kyiv agreeing to permanent neutrality in return for a security guarantee and accepting that Russia controls swathes of Ukraine.

Putin also dismissed what he said was an attempt to lay down "ultimatums" in the form of Western European and Ukrainian demands for a ceasefire starting on Monday. His foreign ministry spelled out that talks about the root causes of the conflict must precede discussions of a ceasefire.

Trump, who says he wants to be remembered as a peacemaker and has repeatedly promised to end the war, earlier responded to Putin's address by saying that this could be "A potentially great day for Russia and Ukraine!".