Former Trump adviser Steve Cortes says the financial markets indicate investors fear China’s Communist Party leadership is preparing to fulfill it’s long-stated objective of seizing Taiwan.

Cortes, a former financial-market commentator for CNBC, told Steve Bannon’s “War Room” on Friday that the “emerging axis of Beijing and Moscow” is emboldening the Chinese Communist Party to “finally make a move on Taiwan.”

Beijing, he said, sees “a weak leader in the White House and knows “they have a West that is unwilling to even take serious action against Moscow right now.”

Consequently, this “may be their window,” Cortes said in the interview, which was spotlighted by the Gateway Pundit.

“It may well be ripe for the taking to attack Taiwan,” he said.

Cortes pointed to the market indicators.

The value has declined more than 20% from a high that was reached just five weeks ago of $145.

“I believe the Taiwan semiconductor is a lead indicator telling us that that the risks for Taiwan are rising dramatically,” he said. “And it Taiwan becomes a fighting situation, if it becomes hot it will make the Ukraine situation look tame by comparison.”

See Cortes remarks Friday on “War Room”:

The conflict over Taiwan’s independence, the Chinese leader said, “cannot be passed on from generation to generation.”

Some China watchers have argued that the United States could save Taiwan from Chinese invasion by promising to destroy the island’s infrastructure, or at least its chipmaking capability. Writing in Parameters, the U.S. Army War College’s quarterly, Air University’s Jared McKinney and Colorado State University’s Peter Harris said Taipei and Washington should make the island “unwantable.”

But Michael Turton, a Taiwan resident and Taipei Times columnist, argued this month that China “wanted Taiwan long before TSMC was churning out chips, and would want it even if TSMC had never existed.”