2023-06-30 10:07:04
China outraged: USA shoot down suspected spy balloon
Was it espionage or not? The Chinese balloon that the US military shot down in February was crammed with technology – including from the US. But he is said not to have given any information to China.
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The US military shot down a suspected Chinese espionage balloon in early February. The incident created enormous tension between Washington and Beijing. Now the Pentagon is saying that the balloon is said not to have collected any data or information and sent it to China.
It wasn’t all that bad, the Pentagon says four months following the US Air Force shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon. At least that’s what Pat Ryder, spokesman for the US Department of Defense, now claimed in a media conference.
In February, it was known “that it (the balloon) had intelligence-gathering capabilities,” Ryder told reporters. “But it was (…) and it is now our assessment that no collection occurred during transit or overflying the United States.” “The efforts we made also contributed to this,” Ryder added.
Shouldn’t the US have shot down the balloon at all, but should China have believed that it was a weather balloon? After all, the incident had caused relations between the two superpowers to cool noticeably.
US pilots shot down the suspected Chinese spy balloon over the Atlantic in early February.
Image: AP
Joe Biden downplays the incident
The fact that a balloon stuffed with technology should not have collected any information when it flew over, as the USA now claim, causes frowns. For some, it seems like an appeasement strategy by Joe Biden, who downplayed the incident as a “stupid incident”. Chris Chappell from the YouTube channel “China Uncensored” suspects that the US President simply didn’t want and doesn’t want to have any trouble.
Ultimately, Joe Biden is keen to stabilize the strained relationship with China. At the beginning of February, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken canceled a trip to Beijing at short notice because of the balloon affair. As recently as late June, Blinken flew to Beijing to meet with Xi Jingpin. Dissonances in the run-up to the visit should be avoided at all costs.
US engineering aboard China’s balloon
The suspected spy balloon was in the US and Canada for days at the beginning of February. The US Air Force took him out of the sky off the coast of South Carolina on February 4 and recovered the debris from the sea.
The analysis turned out that part of the technology used came from the USA, as the Wall Street Journal citing the preliminary investigation report writes. Some of the items were commercially available goods that might also be ordered online. These devices were combined with specialized Chinese sensors.
The “Wall Street Journal” concludes from the mixture of high-tech and conventional technology that the balloon was intended more for surveillance purposes than for scientific observations, as China has always claimed. It remains unclear why the balloon apparently did not transmit the information collected. It might have been due to a malfunction or countermeasures by the US military.
With agency material.
The remains of the downed balloon were recovered from the Atlantic by US forces: the investigation revealed that China had installed a good deal of US technology.
EPA
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