Will Obama drop a viper in China's lap?

Last August I wrote in this blog that Taiwan's long-hoped-for F-16 C/D purchase could become an election issue in the USA this year. The recent letter from the Obama administration to Senator John Cornyn suggests that the administration could indeed sell Taiwan new F-16s. This would be a great way to bolster the president's tough guy foreign policy credentials and show that he cares about jobs back home. He might even sincerely care about defending Taiwan.

That said, is it really in the interests of the US to sell advanced F-16 C/Ds or, perhaps, the new F-16V to Taiwan? Such a deal would indeed rile Beijing, but they get upset at every US arms sale to Taiwan, no matter how small. Rather, the more important issue could be technology transfer to the mainland.

Exchanges between Taiwan and China have become increasingly close in recent years, with large numbers of direct flights now available. Many Taiwanese seek work on the mainland, and this is certainly the case in the aerospace sector. Inevitably, a degree of knowledge transfer occurs here.

Over drinks in Taipei last year a friend of mine went as far as to outline a nightmare scenario for the US that would make for a decent spy novel. The Chinese could cosy up to a Taiwanese pilot and offer him $10-20 million to fly his advanced variant F-16 to the mainland, where he would then live a life of luxury.

Though the US would probably realise what happened pretty quickly, as the aircraft would likely come with kill switches and secret transponders, having a late model F-16 would be of immense use to China's on the reverse engineering front.

No matter what happens, this is all great stuff for us journos.