© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: U.S. and Chinese language flags are seen on this illustration taken, January 30, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration
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By Steve Holland, Michael Martina and David Brunnstrom
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -China’s flight of a suspected surveillance balloon over the US seems to mark a extra aggressive – albeit puzzling – espionage tactic than counting on satellites and the theft of business and protection secrets and techniques, safety specialists stated.
Each the US and China have for many years used surveillance satellites to regulate one another from the air. However China’s current balloons – a White Home official stated this week’s episode was not the primary – have some in Washington scratching their heads.
“In a manner, it is extra amateurish,” stated former White Home nationwide safety adviser John Bolton. “Do the cameras of their satellites not have excessive sufficient decision that they need to ship a balloon over?”
The uproar over the balloon comes as China has been build up its navy capabilities and difficult America’s navy presence within the Pacific. The USA additionally believes Beijing routinely seeks to seize proprietary info and data from U.S. firms.
China stated the balloon was for civilian meteorological and scientific functions that strayed into U.S. airspace, on Saturday accusing U.S. politicians and media of profiting from the scenario to discredit China. It has beforehand rebuffed accusations of espionage and stated the US holds a Chilly Warfare mentality and hypes up the ‘China risk.’
The balloon found this week appeared intentionally provocative, stated Dean Cheng, senior advisor to the China program on the U.S. Institute of Peace.
“It is a method to take a look at how does the opposite facet reply, not in a navy sense. However politically, what do you do about it? Do you retain it quiet? If there have been actually many and this isn’t the primary time, then it raises an fascinating query. What occurred to the earlier ones? Did we shoot them down?” he stated.
Mike Rounds, a Republican member of the U.S. Senate Armed Providers Committee, instructed Fox Information it could be good to get better the balloon to see “if it was designed to really acquire information or if it was designed to check our response capabilities.”
Andrew Antonio, co-founder of high-altitude balloon startup City Sky, stated the wind currents high-altitude balloons rely on for steering on long-distance journeys had been least favorable within the winter, suggesting China’s intentions won’t have been be to focus on any particular location in the US.
“Particularly concentrating on a sure navy base with that balloon from a launch in China, in January or February, within the northern hemisphere, could be very tough to do, if not inconceivable,” Antonio stated, speculating that the balloon’s enterprise into U.S. airspace may have been the results of a failed experiment, or some failure in its self-termination system.
Including to the questions on Friday evening, a Pentagon assertion stated one other Chinese language balloon was noticed over Latin America.
FBI Director Christopher Wray stated in 2020 that the best long-term risk to U.S. info and mental property was “the counterintelligence and financial espionage risk from China.”
China’s alleged clamor for American commerce secrets and techniques has been so sweeping that the FBI estimated final October that it was opening a brand new Chinese language counter-intelligence operation each 12 hours.
A extra frequent spying tactic by China in current a long time, specialists say, has been to make use of graduate college students and different people with ties to China to achieve entry to delicate supplies by finding out at analysis universities, working at know-how firms or hacking into their pc networks.
“The issue with China is much extra within the educational, scientific world,” stated Mark Zaid, a Washington lawyer who’s concerned in numerous nationwide safety circumstances.
“There is no such thing as a doubt that that dynamic is altering and the Chinese language have gotten extra aggressive for no matter motive.”
The USA has been additionally been accused of spying by China.
Earlier than using spy satellites, the US used high-altitude plane that might not simply be shot down and flew them over the Soviet Union, China and Cuba, for instance.
U.S.-China relations plunged in April 2001 when a U.S. Navy EP-3E indicators intelligence plane collided with a Chinese language fighter jet in mid-air over the South China Sea about 70 miles away from China’s Hainan province.
In 2009, the Pentagon stated 5 Chinese language ships together with a naval vessel harassed U.S. Navy ship the USNS Impeccable, an unarmed ocean surveillance vessel, in worldwide waters off Hainan. China stated the U.S. ship was finishing up an unlawful survey off the island province.
