{"podcast":{"title":"Decoding Geopolitics Podcast with Dominik Presl","slug":"decoding-geopolitics-podcast-with-dominik-presl-6862131","podcast_index_feed_id":6862131,"rss_url":"https://anchor.fm/s/ecf42094/podcast/rss","website_url":"https://www.patreon.com/c/DecodingGeopolitics","image_url":"https://d3t3ozftmdmh3i.cloudfront.net/staging/podcast_uploaded_nologo/39654221/39654221-1760441369220-3e3dd289f3dd1.jpg","author":"Decoding Geopolitics","episode_count":158,"summary":"Decoding Geopolitics is a podcast that tries to make sense of today's dangerous world by talking with real experts on international relations, strategy and security.","last_synced_at":"2026-09-20T06:24:47.500383+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/decoding-geopolitics-podcast-with-dominik-presl-6862131"},"episode":{"title":"Eric Heginbotham: How China Could Take Taiwan Without Firing a Shot - And Why It Could Catastrophically Backfire","slug":"eric-heginbotham-how-china-could-take-taiwan-without-firing-a-shot-and-why-it-could-catastrophically-backfire","published_at":"2026-07-11T07:00:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/decoding-geopolitics-podcast-with-dominik-presl-6862131/eric-heginbotham-how-china-could-take-taiwan-without-firing-a-shot-and-why-it-could-catastrophically-backfire","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/decoding-geopolitics-podcast-with-dominik-presl-6862131","url":"https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/dominik-presl/episodes/Eric-Heginbotham-How-China-Could-Take-Taiwan-Without-Firing-a-Shot---And-Why-It-Could-Catastrophically-Backfire-e3l79sv","audio_url":"https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO6749538609.mp3","summary":"➡️ Watch the full interview ad-free, join a community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics ➡️ Buy your own Geopolitics of the Western Pacific Map Print: https://decoding-geopolitics-shop.fourthwall.com/ ➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://decodinggeopolitics.substack.com/This is a conversation with Eric Heginbotham, a principal research scientist at MIT's Security Studies Program, about a scenario that’s often sold as China’s safer, lower-risk alternative to an invasion of Taiwan - and one that’s also increasingly likely to happen. Eric and his colleagues ran a major war-gaming study on exactly this - what would a blockade actually look like and whether it would be successful.We get into why the war games suggest that an easy win is a dangerous illusion: how a blockade would be more likely to spiral into a full US-China war rather than remain controlled, why China may not actually be able to coerce Taiwan to a surrender, and what everyone misunderstands about what would it actually look like.","meta_description":"➡️ Watch the full interview ad-free, join a community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":2293,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/decoding-geopolitics-podcast-with-dominik-presl-6862131/episodes/eric-heginbotham-how-china-could-take-taiwan-without-firing-a-shot-and-why-it-could-catastrophically-backfire/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/decoding-geopolitics-podcast-with-dominik-presl-6862131/eric-heginbotham-how-china-could-take-taiwan-without-firing-a-shot-and-why-it-could-catastrophically-backfire.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}