Would China really send a balloon to the United States to spy on US ICBM silos? The spotting of a balloon over Billings, Montana this week, has sparked a wave of indignation, particularly among Trump Republicans, who convinced themselves that it’s a spy balloon sent to gain intelligence about US ICBM silos. “Shoot down the Balloon,” Trump himself declared on social media. House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, in an over-the-top comment to Fox News, said: “My concern is that the federal government doesn’t know what’s in that balloon. Is that bioweapons in that balloon? Did that balloon take off from Wuhan?” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has called on President Joe Biden to convene a meeting of the “Gang of Eight"—intelligence committee members and leadership from both parties—to deal with this threat to national security. Twitter is full of comments claiming that Biden is opening up the US to Chinese Communism because he refuses to shoot down the balloon. The balloon even caused Secretary of State Tony Blinken to postpone a trip to China, for which he was supposed to depart today.
Yesterday, the Pentagon weighed in: “Instances of this kind of balloon activity have been observed previously over the past several years,” Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters at the Pentagon. But rest assured: “Once the balloon was detected, the U.S. government acted immediately to protect against the collection of sensitive information.” High ranking officials advised Biden, however, that the risk of falling debris to Americans on the ground was greater than any intelligence benefit that China might derive from it and so they recommended that it not be shot down.
Anybody who believes that China would use balloons to spy on the US would have to think that China is the technical equivalent of Japan of 1942. In fact, as Daily Kos staff writer Mark Sumner points out in a column posted today, China conducted 62 space launches in 2022, second only to the US. They have spy satellites in orbit that are on par with those of the US and so have no need of balloons. But, perhaps the Chinese have gotten ahead of us in balloons, and the Congress wants to investigate the “balloon gap”!
There’s also the simple reality that once a balloon is released, it is a captive of the winds and no one can predict where it’ll end up. “The whole idea that China would be collecting significant intelligence by balloon in 2023 is an insult to everyone involved,” Sumner writes. “The idea that such a balloon can be steered, or even aimed, to pass over a particular site is an utter impossibility. The fact that these things are both being not just stated by supposed experts on national media, but being touted as a possible national security concern is … typical.”
The Chinese have admitted that indeed the balloon is theirs, but is only a humble weather balloon. “The airship is from China. It is a civilian airship used for research, mainly meteorological, purposes,” a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement published on the ministry’s website. “Affected by the Westerlies and with limited self-steering capability, the airship deviated far from its planned course. The Chinese side regrets the unintended entry of the airship into US airspace due to force majeure. The Chinese side will continue communicating with the US side and properly handle this unexpected situation caused by force majeure.”
