It seems like it happened years ago, but the Chinese spy balloon fiasco was only roughly five months ago. The surveillance device was launched on Hainan Island, traveling across the Pacific, toward Alaska, entering US airspace before finally hovering into the contiguous United States. It was detected and tracked for a week, and we did nothing. It could have been blasted out of the sky safely off the Alaskan coast, but NORAD chalked the failure to act as an “awareness gap.” Passengers on a commercial airliner near Billings, Montana, spotted the balloon on February 1.
Biden reportedly wanted to shoot down the balloon, but the military brass warned about civilian casualties; this balloon was massive. We let it hover across US airspace for days, finally shooting it down off the Carolina coast, but not before we probably allowed it to collect information on sensitive military targets. Now, as we’re getting slapped around in China, with deer in the headlights Secretary of State Anthony Blinken being the whipping boy, the president’s remarks on the incident make you wonder if he’s been bought off again because Joe said the Chinese probably didn’t mean to send a massive surveillance device over an area with military installations—total coincidence, right. Biden said it was more embarrassing than intentional (via Fox News):
President Biden on Saturday claimed that a Chinese spy balloon that drifted across the U.S. and caused a major international incident was "more embarrassing than it was intentional" by the communist regime.
The president also said he hopes to talk to China's President Xi Jinping about how the U.S. and Beijing can "get along."
Biden was asked whether Secretary of State Antony Blinken can ease tensions with China as part of his trip to the country. Biden, in response, raised the issue of the balloon, which flew over the U.S. in February until it was shot down off the coast of South Carolina.
"China has some legitimate difficulties unrelated to the United States, and I think one of the things that balloon caused was not so much that it got shot down, but I don't think the leadership knew where it was, knew what it was in it and what was going on," he said.
"I think it was more embarrassing than it was intentional," he said.
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Joe Biden thinks we're all as stupid as he is if he thinks this is a satisfying explainer for this winter’s breach. China suffers from socioeconomic crises, many of which stem from demographic issues—but they do not lack intelligence capabilities. Don’t let this balloon distract us from the bigger picture: the Chinese are football fields ahead of the United States regarding cyber intelligence gathering. They’ve also developed a complex and effective human intelligence network within the United States through various hubs passing off as higher education institutions. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), a then-high-ranking member of House Intelligence, allegedly had sexual relations with a Chinese operative.
But Biden’s remarks also rehash the allegation that he’s compromised, especially by Beijing over these shady government access deals. I circle back to October 2020 and the Tony Bobulinski tapes, where he had files of then-Vice President Joe Biden and his crack cocaine-addicted son Hunter trying to make a deal with CEFC China Energy. It might as well have been with the Chinese Communist Party officials. The deal fell through in 2017, but cash was reportedly still sent to the Biden family for their time.
China doesn’t unintentionally spy on anyone, especially if it's their top geopolitical rival. C’mon, man.
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