Chinese intelligence balloon over U. S.-myth or reality
2023.02.04 03:51
Chinese intelligence balloon over U. S.-myth or reality
By Ray Johnson
Budrigannews.com – Security experts stated that rather than relying on satellites and the theft of industrial and defense secrets, China’s flight of a suspected surveillance balloon over the United States appears to mark a more aggressive, if baffling, espionage strategy.
For decades, the United States and China have used surveillance satellites to monitor one another from space. However, some in Washington are baffled by China’s recent balloons—a White House official stated that this week’s incident was not the first.
John Bolton, a former adviser on national security for the White House, stated, “In a way, it’s more amateurish.” Do their satellite cameras lack sufficient resolution to necessitate the use of a balloon?
The controversy surrounding the balloon occurs at a time when China has been expanding its military capabilities and posing a threat to the American military presence in the Pacific. Additionally, the United States is of the opinion that Beijing regularly aims to acquire knowledge and proprietary information from American businesses.
China claimed on Saturday that the balloon was used for civilian meteorological and scientific research and strayed into U.S. airspace. It also said that American politicians and the media were using the situation to discredit China. It has stated that the United States has a Cold War mentality and exaggerates the “China threat” in response to allegations of espionage.
Dean Cheng, senior advisor to the China program at the U.S. Institute of Peace, stated that the balloon that was discovered this week appeared to be deliberately provocative.
“This is not a military tactic; rather, it is a test of how the other side responds. However, politically, what are your options? Do you remain silent? It raises an intriguing question if there have been many, and this is not the first time. What took place with the earlier ones? Did we shoot at them? He stated
Fox News was informed by Republican Senate Armed Services Committee member Mike Rounds that it would be beneficial to recover the balloon in order to determine “if it was designed to actually collect data or if it was designed to test our response capabilities.” Rounds was speaking about the matter.
According to Andrew Antonio, co-founder of the high-altitude balloon startup Urban Sky, the wind currents that high-altitude balloons rely on to steer on long-distance trips were least favorable in the winter. This suggests that China’s intentions might not have been to target any particular area in the United States.
Antonio speculated that the balloon’s entry into U.S. airspace might have been the result of a failed experiment or a malfunction in its self-termination system, saying, “Specific targeting a certain military base with that balloon from a launch in China, in January or February, in the northern hemisphere, is very difficult to do, if not impossible.”
A Pentagon statement on Friday night stated that another Chinese balloon had been observed over Latin America, adding to the confusion.
In 2020, FBI Director Christopher Wray stated that “the counterintelligence and economic espionage threat from China” posed the greatest long-term threat to U.S. information and intellectual property.
The FBI estimated in October that it was opening a new Chinese counterintelligence operation every 12 hours due to China’s alleged clamor for American trade secrets.
Experts say that in recent decades, China has used graduate students and others with ties to China to gain access to sensitive materials by working at technology companies, studying at research universities, or hacking into their computer networks.
Mark Zaid, a Washington lawyer who is involved in various national security cases, stated, “The problem with China is far more in the academic, scientific world.”
“There is no doubt that that dynamic is changing, and for whatever reason, the Chinese are becoming more aggressive,”
China has also leveled accusations of spying against the United States.
The United States flew high-altitude aircraft that could not be easily shot down over the Soviet Union, China, and Cuba, for instance, prior to the use of spy satellites.
When a U.S. Navy EP-3E signals intelligence aircraft collided with a Chinese fighter jet in the middle of the air over the South China Sea, approximately 70 miles from China’s Hainan province, in April 2001, relations between the United States and China plummeted.
The USNS Impeccable, an unarmed ocean surveillance vessel, was said to have been harassed by five Chinese ships, including a naval vessel, in international waters off Hainan in 2009, according to the Pentagon. China claimed that the US ship was conducting an illegal survey in the vicinity of the island province.
