The porcupine strategy for Taiwan is the right strategy. Taipei should procure large quantities of asymmetric weapons, train its reserves seriously, harden its infrastructure, and prepare for a war of attrition that bleeds an invader rather than meeting him on the beach. American analysts have argued this for over a decade. Taiwanese officials have agreed with the argument in principle, repeatedly. The procurement record tells a different story.

Taiwan continues to prioritize prestige platforms over distributed lethality. The F-16V upgrade program, while sensible, absorbs budget that could buy thousands of Stingers. Submarine indigenization, an enormously expensive undertaking, is not the highest-marginal-utility investment for an island that may face a strait crossing. Surface combatants in the Taiwanese inventory will not survive the first hour of a contested strait operation. The procurement pattern is recognizably that of a conventional state defense ministry, not a porcupine in waiting.

The United States sells Taiwan weapons. This has been true since the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 mandated that the US provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive character sufficient to maintain its self-defense capability. The commitment has been honored through administrations of both parties, at varying levels of political visibility and diplomatic cost. It has also produced a backlog of undelivered weapons that, as of the mid-2020s, runs to billions of dollars in contracted but unshipped equipment — a gap between what Taiwan has bought and what it has received that raises serious questions about the operational meaning of the commitment.