This week the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) released Lights Out? Wargaming a Chinese Blockade of Taiwan, a detailed simulation-driven enquiry by Mark F. Cancian, Matthew F. Cancian and Eric Heginbotham.

Over the course of 26 separate wargames, Beijing was cast as the aggressor seeking to choke off Taiwan’s maritime lifelines. The results suggest the potential for cataclysmic naval duels—perhaps the fiercest since the Second World War—as well as enormous disruption to energy supplies and civilian wellbeing across Taiwan.

The report is lucid: Beijing may opt for blockade rather than invasion in the near term, given logistical challenges of a full amphibious campaign. A partial or total interdiction of shipping could sap Taiwan’s resilience before troops even land. The simulations explored a hierarchy of scenarios—from targeted surface and submarine interdiction to kinetic strikes on energy grids and cargo nodes.

What the Games Found: A Chokehold That Bites Back

Across most simulations—even partial interdictions—the effects were stark. Taiwan’s cargo imports fell to roughly 20% of baseline within a few weeks; electricity generation cratered to 30% of demand. Civil utilities and basic services could be starved in little over two months unless counter‑measures took hold.

Equally striking: Chinese forces paid a steep price. These simulated nights on the water were no walkover—China’s carrier groups, submarines, aircraft, and missile arsenals suffered mounting losses as coalition or Taiwanese forces sought to break the blockade or escort merchant vessels through contested waters.

Yet perhaps the most important finding: a hardened civilian electrical infrastructure dramatically alters that calculus. Simulations in which Taiwan’s grid had been reinforced saw recovery begin within weeks—in unconstrained scenarios, a near‑total blackout persisted.

Strategic Chess: Escalation Pressures and Escalatory Risk

The authors observe that a blockade is not a lower‑risk option for Beijing. Far from being a polished surgical strike aimed at supply chains alone, it invites escalation. Maritime interdiction invites counter‑interdiction; missile strikes on energy infrastructure escalate to retaliatory strikes on the PRC; over time, conventional war becomes almost inevitable, possibly even nuclear if deterrence fails—echoing findings from earlier CSIS wargames involving nuclear scenarios.

China’s doctrinal ambition to seize “three dominances” in air, sea and information—themselves prerequisites for an effective blockade—carries operational risk if those domains cannot be decisively locked down.

A Porcupine Strategy: Taiwan’s Best Shot

The analysis resonates with the so‑called porcupine doctrine: Taiwan should eschew grand platforms and invest instead in dispersed, mobile systems—anti‑ship cruise missiles, mobile air‑defence, submarine warfare and sea‑denial capabilities. Wargame iterations confirm: Taiwan’s surface navy offers negligible deterrence if isolated; air power is vulnerable unless securely underground; and anti‑ship cruise missiles prove the most cost‑effective asymmetrical weapon to attrit Chinese logistics.

This concept dovetails with Cancian’s earlier remarks that equipping Taiwan with additional Harpoon or similar cruise missile units would dramatically raise the cost of blockade or invasion without deploying U.S. boots on the ground.

Policy Prescriptions: Deterrence, Planning, Preparation

The report concludes with sober, practical ideas. Foremost: prepare merchant fleets—identify and ready vessels capable of blockade‑running under escort. Second: harden Taiwan’s energy grid—subterranean cabling, redundant generation, fuel stockage to blunt early strikes.

Third: develop U.S. contingency plans for rapid intervention—airlift, missile cover, self‑healing convoy protections. Fourth: prepare counter‑blockade tactics—orders of battle, sensor networks, allied naval coordination to break China’s interdiction rings.

Taken together, these measures would not guarantee success—but they would communicate to Beijing that blockading Taiwan is fraught with intolerable costs.

Global Repercussions: Trade, Chips, and Diplomatic Riptides

A blockade of Taiwan threatens more than Taipei’s survival. Taiwan sits astride major trade corridors and imports nearly all of its energy—coal, natural gas, crude oil—and up to 70% of its food. Disrupting trade by even half would impose terminal economic pain.

Moreover, Taiwan is a linchpin in the global semiconductor ecosystem. Any blockade would ripple through supply chains worldwide. CSIS and Rhodium Group studies estimate trillions of dollars of global output at risk in a prolonged Taiwan Strait crisis.

Pressing Questions: What Next for the West?

If China regards blockade as its preferred coercive tool in the near‑term, democratic nations must gird not merely for war, but for sustained hybrid pressure campaigns. Taiwan’s resistance must be plausible for weeks, long enough for allies to muster naval and logistics forces.

Sensitively timed sanctions, economic offset mechanisms, and allied readiness drills must together shore up deterrence. Preparations should not wait until the first missile falls—CSIS’s authors emphasise that only credible preparedness can short‑circuit Beijing’s assumption of impunity.

Lights Out? reveals that a Chinese blockade of Taiwan—once considered a lower‑risk coercive option—would instead be a gamble of extraordinary proportions. Beijing may inflict sharp pain on the island, but at steep penalty. A reinforced Taiwanese grid, a fleet of blockade‑running vessels, and allied naval resolve could transform a coercive gambit into an own goal.

For the UK, Brussels and Washington alike, this analysis delivers both warning and roadmap. The era of hybrid grey‑zone coercion is here—and unless Taiwan and its partners act swiftly, the lights may indeed go out.

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Read Also: NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has warned that the People’s Republic of China may seek to provoke a Russian military attack on NATO member states in Europe to distract the alliance from a potential conflict over Taiwan.

“Let’s not be naive,” Rutte said. “If Xi Jinping would attack Taiwan, he would first make sure that he makes a call to his very junior partner in all of this, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, and tell him: ‘Hey, I’m going to do this, and I need you to keep them busy in Europe by attacking NATO territory.’”

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