Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis came out swinging against China during an interview with Piers Morgan this week, saying that the communist nation represents the biggest threat that the U.S. faces and that he would not tolerate an invasion of Taiwan.
The remarks come as U.S. officials have increasingly warned that China is preparing to invade the island nation and that the U.S. may end up at war with China in the next couple of years.
Taiwan is of utmost strategic importance to the U.S. because the overwhelming majority of the world’s advanced semiconductors are manufactured by the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC).
Former Trump national security adviser Robert O’Brien said earlier this month that if China invades Taiwan that the U.S. will destroy TSMC’s facilities rather than allow China to capture them, which would make them “the new OPEC of silicon chips” and allow China to “control the world economy.”
“The United States and its allies are never going to let those factories fall into Chinese hands,” O’Brien said.
DeSantis was asked about the increasing tensions in the region during an interview with Morgan on Fox Nation and whether the U.S. should get involved if China invades.
“That would be aggression,” DeSantis said. “Absolutely it would be aggression. Taiwan is a strong ally of the United States. I think that’s a critical interest, for us but also for our key allies like Japan and South Korea, and I think overall the number one issue that we face internationally is checking the growth and the rise of China.”
“They’re much more powerful than Putin and Russia are, and they really represent the biggest threat that we’ve seen to our ability to lead since the Soviet Union,” he continued.
When asked about whether he would ban Chinese-controlled TikTok, DeSantis responded, “I would.”
“I think it’s a security risk, they are harvesting so much data on our citizens,” DeSantis continued. “There’s a whole bunch of other apps and stuff that are out there, and honestly Piers, I’ve got young kids. I don’t want our kids on some of this stuff. It’s not healthy for them. The TikTok in China is sanitized, it’s more wholesome. Here they’re putting in a lot of bad stuff too. So, I think it’s had a corrosive impact but that in of itself wouldn’t be enough, what’s enough though is how they’re harvesting that to use against the American people.”