China’s Top Airship Scientist Promoted Program to Watch the World From Above

The balloon that was launched in July 2019, Professor Wu said then, was a “big guy,” nearly 330 feet in length and weighing several tons, which appears to be bigger than the balloon that was shot down off the coast of South Carolina by an American fighter jet this month. “This is the first time that an aerodynamically controlled airship has flown around the world in the stratosphere at 20,000 meters,” or about 65,000 feet high, Professor Wu told an outlet of the Southern Daily newspaper of Guangdong Province. The…

What China’s Military Balloons Show About Its Spying Ambitions

Now, as some smaller states — particularly those the United States describes as allies and partners — confront this new potential threat of surveillance, their options may be limited. What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source. Shooting down balloons is…

Chinese Spy Balloon or ‘Civilian Device’?

WASHINGTON — American military officials on Thursday said they had detected a “high-altitude surveillance balloon” launched by China floating in the skies of Montana, causing a diplomatic panic that led Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken to postpone a planned trip to Beijing. On Friday, Chinese officials declared that the floating orb was a “mainly meteorological” balloon and described its drift into American airspace as caused by “force majeure” — forces beyond a party’s control, which cannot be considered a violation. The development comes months after President Biden and President…