Taiwan’s defense establishment has been conducting an argument with itself for most of the past decade about what kind of military it needs. On one side: advocates of conventional deterrence, who want advanced fighter aircraft, large surface combatants, and the visible symbols of military capability that signal to Beijing that Taiwan can fight and to Washington that Taiwan is a serious defense partner. On the other side: advocates of asymmetric or “porcupine” defense, who argue that Taiwan cannot match PLA conventional capability in a symmetric competition and that investing in high-cost platforms that the PLA can destroy on the ground before they are ever used is strategically incoherent.