Down chinese economic espionage mess11/18/2023 During the Cold War, serious tragedies resulted from such mistakes, even as world-ending possibilities were narrowly averted. They pose a real risk: of being mistaken for something more dangerous. That doesn’t make airspace violations acceptable. It’s not unreasonable that China would attempt to do the same to the United States. The United States uses a variety of tools, from satellites to intercepted communications, to surveil China. Mutual surveillance is a reality that requires a measured reaction. Then-as now-the panic was worsened by a lack of transparency, leading the United States to be convinced of an imaginary “ missile gap.” Of course the Soviet threat was real, but paranoias did damage to U.S. But it reflects something that happened throughout the Cold War, from Red Scares to the fear that UFOs were a secret Soviet military project. Some Republican lawmakers posted images with guns promising to shoot down the balloon themselves.Īll of this was, of course, counterproductive to sane policymaking. President Joe Biden was “ compromised” by China. Republican politicians speculated that the balloon contained “ bioweapons” and that U.S. Much of the commentary about the surveillance balloon, especially from the U.S. politicians: to use concerns about China as a weapon in domestic partisan fights. This reaction follows another tendency among U.S. military’s sensible approach-to wait to shoot down the balloon since its surveillance threat had been neutralized-is seen as a sign of weakness. This attitude transforms every minor provocation into a high-stakes conflict. Marco Rubio, for example, blamed the Biden administration for not destroying the balloon sooner. willingness to react any reaction but the most extreme will convince U.S. From this perspective, anything China does probes the boundaries of the U.S. Pundits and politicians in Washington tend to read Beijing’s actions as a test of will. The surveillance balloon may be a useful, cost-efficient tool it may also be an expensive boondoggle. But corruption pervades the military procurement system. Because the Chinese military is particularly opaque, its mistakes are less obvious. Some media coverage even raised the possibility of a “ balloon gap,” but that assumes there must be a cunning motivation behind the surveillance. None of this stopped a “ hullaballoon” from breaking out among U.S. It’s also possible that Beijing simply lost control of the vessel. The extreme cold weather in north Asia late last month could have disrupted the balloon’s course. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s now-postponed diplomatic trip to China, though.)įurthermore, past incursions into foreign airspace by Chinese balloons have been relatively short, not an eight-day jaunt visible to thousands of people on the ground that ended with the United States taking possession of the balloon’s payload. (One could imagine a scenario in which a hawkish faction in Beijing may have sought to sabotage U.S. It’s hard to see what China would gain from the move, especially given the ongoing attempt to rebuild U.S.-China relations, however fragile. However, it’s still likely that the balloon’s course was a mistake, not a deliberate provocation. It seems that China has been experimenting with a surveillance balloon network for several years, including brief intrusions into foreign airspace, including that of Taiwan and the United States.Ĭhina maintains that the balloon was a meteorological device that went off course-a dubious claim, given the size of the vessel. aircraft shot down a high-altitude Chinese balloon last Saturday off the coast of South Carolina, they recovered a potential intelligence haul. What the Spy Balloon Reveals About U.S.-China Relations
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