The suspicions of espionage are confirmed. The investigation into this Chinese spy balloon detected and then shot down in American airspace in early February is progressing and remains at the heart of concerns across the Atlantic. If the Biden administration has refused to comment for several weeks, two current senior officials with access to various reports on the issue, have leaked some information to television networks NBC News And CNN.
According to these media, the Chinese balloon managed to fly over important and sensitive US military bases on several occasions. China could even have controlled the balloon so that it could make multiple passes over these sites and transmit the information it gathered to Beijing in real time, the unnamed senior officials report to NBC News.
“Intelligence collected by China is primarily electronic signals, which can be picked up from base personnel weapons or communications systems, but not images,” they say. While the balloon was able to transmit information to Beijing in real time, the US government still isn’t sure if the Chinese government could erase the data from the balloon as it received it. “Which raises questions as to whether there is intelligence collected by China without the United States knowing about it,” said one of the informants close to the file with CNN.
Limited leaks
The senior officials also said that China could have collected a lot more intelligence on the various sensitive sites had it not been for the administration’s efforts to roll the ball back. Flying alongside the craft, US authorities had managed to jam its electronic signals, effectively preventing it from broadcasting or emitting any signals. “Although the analysis of the wreckage of the balloon is still in progress, its overflight of the United States does not seem to have brought new essential information to China”, tempers one of the senior officials. Questioned by NBC News, John Kirby, the spokesman for the National Security Council at the White House, did not confirm or deny this information. The United States “limited the ability of the ball to collect any added value”, he simply commented.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon said experts are still analyzing debris collected from the balloon after it was shot down on Feb. 4 off South Carolina. “At this time, I have not been able to confirm (with the experts, editor’s note) that there was a real-time transmission of the balloon to China,” said Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh, adding : “it’s something we are analyzing at the moment”.
Since the start of this case, officials in Beijing have dismissed accusations from Washington that the balloon was a government intelligence-gathering tool. China has also accused the United States of having overreacted to a simple “civilian weather aircraft” “which had accidentally deviated from its route”. Washington has nevertheless always considered that this balloon had been sent for espionage purposes. In early February, US officials said images captured by US military planes showed that the aircraft that flew over the United States was indeed equipped with intelligence gathering tools, and not intended for the weather. The incident sparked a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Washington with the last-minute cancellation of a visit to China by US Foreign Minister Antony Blinken.