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For the fourth time in less than 10 days, U.S. fighters have shot down a balloon, at least one of which was a Chinese spy balloon. One traversed the entire country before being shot down. Another entered Alaskan air space undetected and was downed and the third was detected and then shot down over Canada. The fourth was shot down over Lake Huron.
The State Department — apparently shocked by China’s conduct — says that Chinese balloons have been used to spy on 40 countries on five continents.
On Sunday, U.S. officials acknowledged that the first three “objects” were balloons but still didn’t say whether the Alaska balloon and the one shot down over Canada were Chinese.
We know that the Biden White House learned of the first Chinese balloon days before it admitted that the device was cruising across the country. It was allowed to do so, transmitting back to China whatever it learned from the U.S. Air Force “global strike” bases it leisurely drifted over — intercepting communications, spying on whatever it could — until it was shot down after passing over South Carolina’s Atlantic coast.
President Joe Biden’s Pentagon crew reportedly told him that it was too dangerous to people on the ground to shoot it down sooner. That idea was abandoned when another spy balloon (whether from China or not, we don’t know, but the Pentagon and National Security Agency undoubtedly do) was shot down over Alaska last weekend.
Biden’s crew first said that Chinese balloons had, at least three times, passed over the U.S. during Trump’s presidency and were not shot down. That was quickly debunked by Trump’s former defense secretary Mark Esper and his former director of national intelligence John Ratcliffe, both of whom said they had no knowledge of any such Chinese spy balloons.
So what’s the big deal?
First, China’s balloon flight was a direct challenge to American sovereignty. There is no treaty with China that allows it to fly over our territory without permission. The Chinese balloon flight(s) were an act of aggression that should surprise no one. China conducts cyber espionage operations against U.S. intelligence, military, and commercial computer networks hundreds or thousands of times every day.
Biden could have — and obviously should have — ordered the Chinese Communist Party’s balloon (the “Party balloon,” as the Washington Times’s Charlie Hurt called it) shot down long before he did without danger to people or buildings on the ground.
Some NORAD generals should be answering pointed questions about how the balloon entered U.S. airspace without being detected. The damned thing, at least the first one, was at least 100 feet tall and probably had a radar signature equal to a Boeing 747.
Second, the Party balloon not only gave China a bouquet of intelligence information, but also gave it the opportunity to practice navigating balloons over the U.
