TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Former Trump administration National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien said he believes a Taiwan with 1 million AK47-armed citizens on “every corner and in every apartment block” would be a fearful deterrent to a Chinese invasion.

Speaking in Taipei on Friday (March 24), O’Brien said he has been on a “listening tour” of Taiwan that began on March 19, meeting Taiwan’s top political leaders from President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) to opposition leader Eric Chu (朱立倫), as well as members of minor parties and “ministers from all the key ministries.” He said the U.S. government will release a bi-partisan report this summer that details findings of the trip and makes recommendations on how to strengthen the U.S.-Taiwan relationship.

O’Brien repeatedly said that Taiwan needed to build deterrence if it wanted to avoid conflict with China, saying the best way to avoid a war is through strength. He said that both the U.S. and Taiwan have a role in deterring a Chinese invasion, and that defenses along Taiwan’s China-facing west coast should be improved using the country’s skilled workforce and advanced technology.

O’Brien also said that Taiwanese should be firearm trained and this would be a massive deterrent. “Think how rattled it would make the leadership of the CCP if they knew that if they invaded there would be 1 million Taiwanese with an AK47,” he said.

O’Brien said he recognized that the culture was different in Taiwan and America, and that guns were a sensitive issue, but did not hold back when expressing his belief in arming Taiwanese citizens, comparing a possible future Chinese invasion of Taiwan to the war in Ukraine. “Those legitimate concerns around gun ownership concerns or gun safety pale in comparison when we look at the war crimes that have taken place,” he said.

Safeguards could be put in place to ensure weapons weren’t misused, O’Brien said. He suggested public armories or personal safes could be used to store firearms.

Guns are tightly controlled in Taiwan, with a legal amendment allowing Taiwan’s police to fire guns at suspects suspected of using lethal weapons only being passed in October last year.

When asked about Honduras’ recent decision to switch diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China, O’Brien said that while there were important benefits gained for Taiwanese from having formal diplomatic allies, Taiwan’s relationship with the U.S. was “far more important."

“As important as diplomatic relations are, the integrity of the country, the anti-corruption stance of the country both in Taiwan and in the U.S. is more important,” he said.

O’Brien said the Trump and Biden administrations have both worked with Taiwan and the countries that still maintain diplomatic relations with Taiwan to deter them from switching recognition from China.

During O’Brien’s visit, he served as the chair of the Global Taiwan Institute's Task Force on U.S.-Taiwan Relations. The institute is a Washington-based non-profit organization based in Washington D.C. that seeks to enhance the U.S.-Taiwan relationship and produce research and educational programs on Taiwan.