Painting the eyes of war on the Buddha.
In many traditions, when you paint or sculpt a Buddha, the eyes are the very last to be painted. It’s only after the eyes have been completed that the sculpture is fully alive and empowered.
The US has just approved a $75 million weapons package to Taiwan province involving the sale of the Link 16 communications system.
The acquisition of Link 16 is analogous to “painting the eyes on the Buddha”: a last touch, it makes Taiwan’s military systems and weapons platforms live and far-seeing. It confers deadly powers, or more prosaically, in the words of the US military, it completes Taiwan as the final, lethal link of the multilateral coalition kill chain against China.
It seemingly is, operating independently of China and all. It’s a weird international “must not call it a country” thing but I think everyone recognizes that it de facto is a country even though they pretend it isn’t because politics.