{"id":547555,"date":"2023-02-04T00:42:11","date_gmt":"2023-02-03T21:42:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/why-the-discovery-of-a-chinese-balloon-in-us-skies-is-such-a-big-deal\/"},"modified":"2023-02-04T00:42:11","modified_gmt":"2023-02-03T21:42:11","slug":"why-the-discovery-of-a-chinese-balloon-in-us-skies-is-such-a-big-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/why-the-discovery-of-a-chinese-balloon-in-us-skies-is-such-a-big-deal\/","title":{"rendered":"#Why the discovery of a Chinese balloon in US skies is such a big deal"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_84 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-custom ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title\" style=\"cursor:inherit\">Table of Contents<\/p>\n<label for=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a245dd27971e\" class=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-label\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/label><input type=\"checkbox\"  id=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a245dd27971e\" checked aria-label=\"Toggle\" \/><nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-1'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/why-the-discovery-of-a-chinese-balloon-in-us-skies-is-such-a-big-deal\/#Why_the_discovery_of_a_Chinese_balloon_in_US_skies_is_such_a_big_deal\" >Why the discovery of a Chinese balloon in US skies is such a big deal<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<h1><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Why_the_discovery_of_a_Chinese_balloon_in_US_skies_is_such_a_big_deal\"><\/span>Why the discovery of a Chinese balloon in US skies is such a big deal<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h1>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/02\/China-spy-balloon-02012023.jpg?w=900\" \/><br \/>Tensions between the U.S. and China are on the rise again after the discovery of what the Biden administration is describing as a sophisticated Chinese espionage tool flying over the United States.<\/p>\n<p>The discovery of a massive Chinese surveillance balloon over Montana, which hosts some nuclear silos, sparked a diplomatic crisis on Friday, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken quickly postponing a high-stakes <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/trip-and-travel\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"10\" title=\"Trip &amp; Travel\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">trip<\/a> to Beijing hours before he was set to leave.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Senior U.S. officials across the Departments of State and Defense lodged complaints with their Chinese counterparts, underscoring the anger across the Biden administration.<\/p>\n<p>Republicans in Congress slammed both China and the administration over the fact that the balloon had made it into U.S. skies, calling it a serious security breach.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>And from China, there was a sense of chagrin, with the nation issuing a statement accepting responsibility for a private balloon flying into U.S. airspace. Beijing said it regretted this had h<a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/download-scripts-themes-apps\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"9\" title=\"Download Scripts &amp; Themes &amp; Apps\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">app<\/a>ened.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The discovery is a severe incident, said Jacob Stokes, a senior fellow with the Center for a New American Security, and one that is testing how the U.S. and Chinese can cool tensions.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think this incident tells us what we already knew about the state of the U.S.-China relationship. The two powers are locked in an intense geopolitical rivalry, and that\u2019s both the reason we need effective diplomatic engagement, and simultaneously, the major obstacle to those channels working effectively to avoid competition from spiraling out of control,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Some experts expressed caution at overstating the threat from the Chinese balloon.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t know exactly what the balloon is collecting but [if it] were important then it would probably have been shot down long ago,\u201d Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project and associate senior fellow to Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, told The Hill.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat said, it\u2019s the latest chapter in a global trend of an increasing number of unmanned aerial and underwater vehicles used by countries for intelligence collection.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Press secretary and Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said Friday that the Pentagon expects the balloon will be over the U.S. for a few days. It is reviewing options over whether to destroy it, given concerns over falling debris.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not the first time the U.S. has observed surveillance flights, U.S. officials said, but the timing of Blinken\u2019s trip to Beijing and the balloon\u2019s movements prompted a firmer response.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is appearing to hang out for a longer period of time, this time around, [and is] more persistent than in previous instances,\u201d a senior defense official <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.defense.gov\/News\/News-Stories\/Article\/Article\/3287177\/us-tracking-high-altitude-surveillance-balloon\/\">told reporters in a briefing Thursday night<\/a>. That would be one distinguishing factor.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>A U.S. official told The Washington Post that Chinese spy balloons had been observed in Hawaii last year and other times in the Pacific.<\/p>\n<p>Timothy Heath, senior international defense researcher with the RAND Corporation, said surveillance balloons \u2014 the use of which stretches back to the Civil War \u2014 present a relatively cheap and difficult-to-detect method of intelligence collection.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey can be hard to detect because there\u2019s not a lot of metal on them, so radars will not easily find them \u2026 you can position them in a place and just keep them there. Newer technologies allow little motors to be attached so you can make adjustments to the position of the balloon and then they can just stay in a place for quite a while,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>They hold an advantage over satellites which when discovered, are predictable given their orbital path, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo these are reasons why China has taken an interest in balloons.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Still, the balloon&#8217;s discovery over sensitive American military locations marks a serious provocation and comes at a time when U.S. and Chinese military tensions are extremely high, said Anthony Ruggiero, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former deputy assistant to the National Security Council.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s possible China is trying to probe and see how this administration will react to something like this. It\u2019s possible they are trying to test whether the Biden administration is distracted by the war in Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The U.S. views China as its main competitor on nearly every front \u2014 diplomatic, military, economic and ideological \u2014 and Blinken\u2019s trip to Beijing was expected to manage these areas of fraught competition from spiraling into conflict.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Among the most im<a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/social-mediaa\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"1\" title=\"Social Media\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">media<\/a>te concerns is avoiding a U.S. and Chinese military confrontation over Taiwan, where Washington fears Beijing is preparing an invasion of the self-ruled island within the next few years.<\/p>\n<p>China has sided with Russia amid its military assault on Ukraine, has expanded its nuclear weapons stockpile and is <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/general\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"3\" title=\"General\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">general<\/a>ly seen as holding \u00a0ambitions to overtake the U.S. militarily, technologically and economically.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Jim Townsend, who served as deputy assistant secretary of Defense for European and NATO policy during the Obama administration, described the Chinese surveillance balloon as operating in a \u201cgray area\u201d of conflict \u2014\u00a0activities security analysts describe as being provocative and disruptive, but below the threshold of kinetic military activity, challenging how the target can mount a proportional response.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s the Chinese screwing with us,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re pushing us to see how we will respond.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Republicans quickly seized on the Chinese balloon\u2019s intrusion to hammer the Biden administration, accusing the Pentagon and President Biden of being soft on China.<\/p>\n<p>Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said in a Friday appearance on \u201cThe Mike Gallagher Show\u201d that it was \u201cdisappointing\u201d the Pentagon \u201cchose not to bring it down when it was over a sparsely populated area where they could have retrieved it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf these things are flying over our airspace, and there&#8217;s an opportunity to bring them down, we&#8217;re going to do it,\u201d Rubio said. \u201cWe&#8217;re not going to do it in a way that&#8217;s going to fall on a major city and kill anyone \u2026 [but] we have to make that pretty clear.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) sent a letter to the Pentagon Thursday night demanding answers about the balloon after it was spotted in Montana, where a major air force base, Malmstrom Air Force Base, houses nuclear missiles.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe administration failed to protect our border and now has failed to protect our skies,\u201d Daines tweeted.<\/p>\n<p>Heath, of the RAND Institute, said it will be important to follow how the Department of Defense talks about Chinese surveillance and intelligence in the coming days, whether they will choose to disclose more information about Chinese tactics and motivations or provide an opening to resume diplomatic talks.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAre we going to see other follow-on disclosures of other things the Chinese are doing that signal that the U.S. government is actually moving in a more hardline direction?\u201d he asked. \u201cVersus if this appears to be a one off, and the U.S. government has signaled that it wants to resume talks and ease tensions, that would reveal a disposition that&#8217;s much more inclined towards reducing tensions.\u201d<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\">If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a style=\"color: #ff0000;\" href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/publications\/CAAqBwgKMLG0nwswvr63Aw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">For forums sites go to <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/forum.buradabiliyorum.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Forum.BuradaBiliyorum.Com<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>If you want to read more <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/news\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"2\" title=\"News\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">News<\/a> articles, you can visit our <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/news\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">News category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/policy\/defense\/3843240-why-the-discovery-of-a-chinese-balloon-in-us-skies-is-such-a-big-deal\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why the discovery of a Chinese balloon in US skies is such a big deal Tensions between the U.S. and China are on the rise again after the discovery of what the Biden administration is describing as a sophisticated Chinese espionage tool flying over the United States. The discovery of a massive Chinese surveillance balloon&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":547556,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thehill.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/02\/China-spy-balloon-02012023.jpg?w=1280","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[134344,92499,30889,134343,4973,139400,134418,73798,80445,139401,71512,88571,4975,76751,72633,4965,70868],"class_list":["post-547555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-administration","tag-antony-blinken","tag-biden","tag-campaign","tag-china","tag-china-balloon","tag-congress-blog","tag-defense","tag-healthcare","tag-jacob-stokes","tag-montana","tag-newsletters","tag-russia","tag-sustainability","tag-taiwan","tag-technology","tag-ukraine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547555\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}