Why Should We Care if China is Salami-Slicing Its Way Out of the First Island Chain? | with Brad Lendon

For the first time, China's coast guard is asserting sovereignty over waters beyond the First Island Chain and out in the open Pacific, far to the east of Taiwan. To justify it, a hastily assembled group of Chinese academics has suddenly declared that the Philippines' northernmost (and very much inhabited) Batanes island province actually belongs to China.Is this a dangerous new escalation or just another day in East Asia’s highly contested maritime gray zone?This week, co-hosts Ray Powell and Jim Carouso flip the script and put a reporter in the guest chair: Brad Lendon, CNN's Senior News Desk Reporter for Global Military Affairs, who's covered China's maritime rise for over a decade and authored the June 25 story that sparked this conversation, “‘Salami slicing’: How China is trying to increase control in the Pacific”Brad makes the case that this "salami slicing" is nothing new. Beijing has spent years applying steady, below-the-threshold pressure using white-hulled coast guard ships rather than navy gray-hulls. But now those ships are radio-challenging commercial vessels east of Taiwan, mapping the seabed and settling in for what looks like a permanent presence outside the First Island Chain.In this episode:Why coast guard "law enforcement" ships are a more insidious tool for asserting sovereignty than warshipsWhat China's radio challenges to commercial ships could be rehearsing, and Ray's "boa constrictor" warning about a soft quarantine of Taiwan already beginningHow the out-of-nowhere Batanes claim fits Beijing's long-game strategyWhether the Japan-Philippine maritime delimitation talks were a real trigger or just a convenient pretextWhat it all means for the U.S. defense strategy built around the First Island Chain, and whether it's the right tool for a non-military threatBrad's unforgettable story from the bridge of a Canadian frigate threading the Taiwan Strait at midnightA sharp, practitioner-level look at how the map of the Western Pacific is being quietly redrawn one slice at a time.Subscribe for your weekly Indo-Pacific briefing.Follow Brad Lendon’s reporting on CNN or on X, @BradLendonFollow us on X, @IndoPacPodcast, LinkedIn or FacebookFollow Ray Powell on X, @GordianKnotRay, or LinkedIn, or check out his maritime transparency work at SeaLightFollow Jim Carouso on LinkedInSponsored by BowerGroupAsia, a strategic advisory firm that specializes in the Indo-Pacific