United States | FT: The special forces that killed Osama bin Laden prepare to defend Taiwan from a Chinese attack

of the United States The reputedly elite unit of the Marine Corps Special Forces has been planning and training in secret for over a year to defend Taiwan against a Chinese attack, news British newspaper Financial Times (FT) on Thursday.

Seal Team 6 carries out the most secret and difficult operations of the US Armed Forces around the world. It is probably best known as the unit that killed the leader of the al-Qaeda terrorist network Osama bin Laden Abbottabad, Pakistan in 2011, nearly ten years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks by al-Qaeda.

The defense of Taiwan has been planned and trained by Seal Team 6, according to the FT, at its headquarters in Dam Neck, which is located at the Oceana Naval Base in the city of Virginia Beach on the US east coast.

Sources with knowledge of the unit’s operations did not tell the FT details of the Taiwan training, and the US Department of Defense did not comment on the FT’s information.

United States has focused more and more attention on China’s growing power and threat, and Taiwan’s position is the most sensitive issue in its relations with China. Taiwan is practically independent, but China considers it a rebel province and a Chinese leader Xi Jinping is believed to be planning to return it to command in Beijing.

Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, CIA Bill Burns told the FT last week that he had tripled his China budget in three years.

“After the Pentagon’s change of direction towards superpower competition, it was inevitable that even the country’s best anti-terrorist units would seek a role in that arena, because it brings relevance, tasks and money”, commented to the FT Sean Naylorwho runs the security policy online publication The High Tide and is the author of a book about US special forces Relentless Strike: The Secret History of Joint Special Operations Command.