Tag: Blinken, Antony J

How Questions Over a Spy Balloon and U.F.O.s Fed a Crisis Between the U.S. and China

Chin@Strategy

Other murky actions have challenged U.S. analysts trying to read Chinese intentions. On Jan. 28, when the balloon approached the Aleutian Islands and American airspace over Alaska in its off-course trajectory, the balloon’s self-destruct function did not activate, U.S. officials said. Chinese operators may not have wanted to destroy the balloon; it is also possible that they attempted to trigger the self-destruct mechanism and it failed. The Chinese Spy Balloon Showdown The discovery of a Chinese surveillance balloon floating over the United States has added to the rising tensions between…

A Spy Balloon and a Reporting Trip to China, Up in the Air

Chin@Strategy

The Chinese diplomat behind the window at the visa office called me and the other journalists up to the desk, one by one, to hand us our passports. I flipped through mine until I saw the entry visa for China, good for four days. It seemed an auspicious way to kick off the Year of the Rabbit, which promised to be a busy one for United States-China relations, a subject I cover as a diplomatic correspondent for The New York Times. The other reporters and I were set to board…

What China’s Military Balloons Show About Its Spying Ambitions

Chin@Strategy

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…

For a President Who Spends His Days Confronting Russia and China, a Domestic Focus

Chin@Strategy

WASHINGTON — When President Biden delivered his State of the Union address a year ago, war had broken out in Europe just days before and it appeared inevitable that Vladimir V. Putin would quickly take control of Ukraine. China, the Pentagon kept repeating, was America’s “pacing” challenge, a long-term technological and financial competitor, but not likely not to pose an imminent challenge to Taiwan or the United States. On Tuesday night Mr. Biden faced a changed world. Simultaneously managing an aggressive Russia and a risk-taking China may prove the greatest…

China Tries to Play Down Balloon Dispute With Censorship and Memes

Chin@Strategy

On Chinese social media, jokes about the suspected spy balloon have been making the rounds. People quipped that the vessel was a misunderstood attempt at wishing Americans a happy Lantern Festival, the Chinese holiday this past Sunday. Others compared it to a glutinous rice ball, a traditional food eaten during the celebrations. The wisecracking was, in part, what happens on social media anywhere in the world: current events transformed to memes to attract likes and follows. But it also dovetailed with signs of a broader government strategy to downplay an…

Trump-Era Chinese Spy Balloon Incursions Initially Went Undetected

Chin@Strategy

WASHINGTON — The top military commander overseeing North American airspace said Monday that some previous incursions by Chinese spy balloons during the Trump administration were not detected in real time, and the Pentagon learned of them only later. “I will tell you that we did not detect those threats, and that’s a domain awareness gap,” said Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, the commander of the Pentagon’s Northern Command. One explanation, multiple U.S. officials said, is that some previous incursions were initially classified as “unidentified aerial phenomena,” Pentagon speak for U.F.O.s. As the…

Previous Chinese Balloon Incursions Initially Went Undetected

Chin@Strategy

WASHINGTON — The top military commander overseeing North American airspace said Monday that some previous incursions by Chinese spy balloons during the Trump administration were not detected in real time, and the Pentagon learned of them only later. “I will tell you that we did not detect those threats, and that’s a domain awareness gap,” said Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, the commander of the Pentagon’s Northern Command. One explanation, multiple U.S. officials said, is that some previous incursions were initially classified as “unidentified aerial phenomena,” Pentagon speak for U.F.O.s. As the…

China’s Balloon Dispute Aims Attention at Xi’s Leadership

Chin@Strategy

The Chinese balloon that bumbled its way across the United States has launched a thousand questions about its real intent. But it is also focusing the world’s attention on the prospect that the communications and control within Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s government and his vaunted security apparatus may be less coherent — or even less functional — than the image he so confidently projects. The stakes today are high. Relations between Washington and Beijing have frayed, and competition between the two sides has intensified, fueling fears that the wrong move…

Balloon Incident Reveals More Than Spying as Competition With China Intensifies

Chin@Strategy

Of course, there is nothing new about superpowers spying on one another, even from balloons. President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorized surveillance of the Soviet Union by lofting cameras on balloons in the mid-1950s, flying them “over Soviet bloc countries under the guise of meteorological research,” according to an article published by the National Archives in 2009. It “yielded more protests from the Kremlin than it did useful intelligence,” the author, David Haight, an archivist at the Eisenhower Library, reported. With the advent of the first spy satellites, the balloons appeared…

China Finds Itself With Limited Options After U.S. Shoots Down Balloon

Chin@Strategy

After an American fighter jet shot down the Chinese balloon that had floated across the United States, the reaction from Beijing — defensive, angered, yet hedging its options — illustrated the challenges facing China’s leader, Xi Jinping, as he tries to stabilize relations while giving little, if any, ground. Hours after the balloon was struck by a Sidewinder missile and crumpled into the waters off South Carolina, the Chinese foreign ministry declared its “strong discontent and protest” and doubled down on its position that the balloon was a civilian research…