Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here, and a Quick Take for you as we kick off this Monday on Taiwan. Not the place we wanted to be talking about. Certainly not the place Biden wanted to be talking about. But it looks like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is going to Taiwan after all. Biden himself did not know, late last week. And Pelosi had announced her Asia trip this weekend, with four countries listed. On a quick read, it looked like that said she wasn't going, but actually just left it out. It did say in the note that it was including those four states, so clearly they were leaving themselves space.

It is surprising, frankly, because President Biden absolutely didn't want Pelosi to go on this trip. Certainly not now. Certainly in the run-up to the Party Congress and Xi Jinping's succession for this third term. He had found out, and the White House had found out a couple of weeks ago, that she was planning the trip. This was private at this point. None of it was in the media.