I’m quite China is all up in our business, probably more than we’d risk imagining. TikTok and Huawei are notable examples, but I think it goes far beyond that.
90%+ of commercial CCTV cameras are made by the Chinese companies Hikvision or Dahua (and often are branded under many other names). They are banned in government buildings in part because these companies employ slave labor, but also because their security is incredibly weak and these companies often ignore fixing known exploits. I imagine many end users of these cameras do not take the proper precautions to keep their data/cameras secure.
And think about all the web connected security cameras people have around their houses now… some of them made and maintained by Chinese companies, ergo the Chinese government. Then there is the rest of the IoT things everywhere from light switches to fridges to toasters, to TV’s, a lot of this stuff coming from Chinese companies. And it should be just as concerning that some Western companies use Chinese servers to handle their data- I would assume because it’s cheaper. The US military years ago rid itself of DJI drones due to extensive data collection.
And let’s not forget China was trying to weasel their way into global PCR testing during the outbreak of the pandemic- perhaps run a dragnet of people’s personal health info.
These days, most power grid transformer production occurs in China because building it’s time and labor intensive work and it’s obviously cheaper to do it there. At least a few years ago the DoE and FBI decided to inspect a Chinese made transformer that was being imported. It turns out that a circuit existed in it’s control system that did not exist in the schematics. This extra feature if activated would turn off the cooling pumps and temperature monitoring, causing the transformer to overheat and wreck itself. These things can cost upwards of many millions and are not easily replaceable- in some cases they’re custom made. Trump banned transformer sales from China. Biden unfortunately reversed this policy- but I suppose we might have better awareness now.
Taking down infrastructure is an extremely troubling issue. The only thing that comforts me about China’s data collection is that they must have so much collected data that they don’t know what to do with it. And I suppose that’s always the difficult thing for intelligence to do, especially with such dragnet approaches, find the needles in endless field of haystacks. But given how well they can monitor their own population and the fact they continue to collect more and more and more, suggests that it’s a worthwhile endeavor for them.
An aircraft flying at high altitude can create a massive debris field. Malaysian Flight MH17 over Ukraine was at 33,000 feet when it was hit by a missile and it’s debris field was 20 square miles. That said, obviously a balloon is much smaller and less dense, not to mention much slower, than a Boeing 777. But the debris from an exploded missile also poses a risk. I would think a ballon popping at 66k ft is unlikely to drop like a rock- instead probably getting blown around wherever the wind takes it.
Plus we probably don’t necessarily know what is onboard- for all we know it could be carrying hazardous chemicals or maybe they’re just seeding plague across the US.
I think the actual reason for not shooting it down is because that only escalates what I would imagine is an already tense situation. Incidents of shooting first and asking questions later when it comes to air incursions and international incidents typically doesn’t have a good outcome.
Secondly, imagine the panic that would ensure if the news was reporting the Air Force was shooting down a Chinese spy craft over the middle of America. Now that the intrusion is recognized and it’s not exactly huge threat to the public, the military can probably manage the situation just fine and escort it to wherever it goes and I’m sure they will collect it.
I would think right now we have a U2 spy plane following our friendly spy balloon across America. Off the top of my head that’s the only plane we have capable of such altitudes.
I’d be curious if the route this balloon took, how quickly we detected it, and if this is the first time or actually much more common. Perhaps all those UFO’s navy pilots are seeing are actually Chinese spy craft and not actually aliens.
www.bbc.com
