Charlie Campbell
This is how the war will start.
During a highly charged presidential campaign, a bomb explodes, unleashing panic and a wave of recriminations. Then a Chinese Y-8 reconnaissance aircraft vanishes in Taiwan’s eastern waters. Under the guise of search and rescue, Beijing deploys a massive air and naval force that quarantines the island. Reeling from forced sequestration, Taiwanese society suffers a deluge of propaganda and misinformation, pitting husband against wife, father against son. Political and financial interests foment infighting. By the time the first People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops arrive, the island has defeated itself.
On Aug. 2, people across Taiwan tuned into this dystopian vision, which debuted on Taiwanese TV as the acclaimed drama Zero Day Attack, courtesy of showrunner Cheng Hsin-Mei. Over ten hour-long episodes, Zero Day Attack offers a forensic exploration of how a Chinese invasion of Taiwan could manifest, from the political and religious intrigue to media infiltration and economic manipulation. And while speculative fiction, Zero Day Attack is rooted in events already unfolding.
“If you go to the front lines, you can really feel the tension,” Cheng says in her central Taipei office. “China is getting ready to do something.”
Taiwan politically split from the mainland following China’s 1945-49 civil war and its “reunification” has been dubbed a “historical inevitability” by Chinese strongman Xi Jinping. The PLA regularly dispatches scores of warplanes close to the self-ruling island of 24 million, including a record 153 aircraft in a 25-hour period last October, in what Adm. Sam Paparo, head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, told Congress were “dress rehearsals for forced unification.”
“It is becoming more and more difficult to predict the possibility of the PLA turning an exercise into a real invasion,” Taiwan Defense Minister Wellington Koo tells TIME. “This is the threat and challenge Taiwan faces.”
Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te inspects a live-fire exercise featuring US Made M1A2T tanks, in Taiwan on July 10, 2025. Taiwan Defense Ministry/Handout/Anadolu/Getty Images
The specter of war is difficult to reconcile with the carefree bustle of downtown Taipei, where on a cool June evening bickering families and doe-eyed couples throng the city’s night markets as ever before. But the return of Donald Trump to the White House has injected an extra degree of anxiety over the island’s future.
Few places are scrutinizing Trump’s flip flops over U.S. backing for Ukraine with greater apprehension than Taiwan, whose autonomy and cherished democracy have been underwritten by informal American backing. While the U.S. switched diplomatic recognition to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1979, Washington maintains a bevy of ties with Taiwan and is obliged by act of Congress to supply weapons needed for its defense. But Taiwan fears that the combination of Trump's diffidence toward alliances and global acclaim as a war-ending “man of peace” may embolden Xi into finally completing the revolution started by the only leader who’s wielded similarly unchecked power, Mao Zedong.
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