By Andrew Thornebrooke
February 13, 2023Updated: February 13, 2023
The White House is
confirming that a spy balloon program linked to China’s military targeted the
United States and its allies for espionage.
Speaking at a Feb. 13
press conference, National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic
Communications John Kirby acknowledged the program, which the United States
disclosed for the first time last week.
“China has a
high-altitude balloon program for intelligence collection that’s connected to
the People’s Liberation Army,” Kirby said.
Kirby said that the
Chinese spy balloon program targeted the United States’ “closest allies and
partners,” but provided “limited additive” intelligence collection
capabilities. Left unchecked, he said, such continued balloon incursions could
present a severe national security threat to the United States.
Since shooting down the
Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina on Feb. 4, the United
States has shot down three more unidentified flying objects, two in U.S. airspace
and one in Canadian airspace.
Kirby said that the three
new objects were much smaller than the Chinese spy balloon and that the United
States was still not sure what they might be.
“There is no question in
our minds that that system was designed to surveil, that it was an intelligence
asset,” Kirby said of the Chinese spy balloon.
“We knew exactly what
that thing was. These other three didn’t have propulsion, they weren’t being
maneuvered, they were basically being driven by the wind. We don’t know for
sure whether they had a surveillance aspect to them but we can’t rule it out.”
Kirby said that the
United States’ apparent difficulty in tracking all four objects was owed to the
nature of how radar is typically used, and that the nation was enhancing its
capabilities based on newly gathered intelligence.
“Slow-moving objects at
high altitude with a small radar cross section are difficult to detect on
radar, even objects as large as the Chinese spy balloon,” Kirby said.
He added that the United
States would continue to learn from the events including by collecting the
debris of the objects for examination, saying that some of the structure and
electronics from the Chinese spy balloon had been recovered from the bottom of
the Atlantic over the weekend.
China’s balloon
surveillance program was first publicly acknowledged by Secretary of State
Antony Blinken on Feb. 8, when he also acknowledged that the United States was
working to provide intelligence to dozens of other countries affected by the
regime’s espionage efforts.
“We’re doing so because
the United States is not the only target of the balloon program, which has
violated the sovereignty of countries across five continents,” Blinken said at the time.
“As to who is responsible
for that, China is. It doesn’t matter on some level which individuals may or
may not have been responsible. The fact is China engaged in this irresponsible
action in violation of our sovereignty and territorial integrity and
international law.”
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