The administration has been slow to respond in part because officials are still reviewing the historical data on the unidentified aerial phenomena, also known as UAPS, and are running into problems trying to retroactively determine whether past sightings were surveillance tools or other objects such as academic weather balloons, according to the official. The information officials are using for their analysis is at times dated and incomplete.
The delay by the administration on releasing information about the Chinese balloon and the other objects shot down last month raises questions about the extent to which the U.S. fully understands what intelligence foreign governments may be collecting without Washington’s knowledge.
“What is our capability to observe what’s in our airspace? There’s holes in it. We should understand what we can and cannot observe and understand what we need to do to be able to fill those gaps,” said Tim Gallaudet, the former administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “The balloon surprising us — it was a big wake up call.”
Members of Congress say they are pushing the administration to improve the way it collects and analyzes UAP data.
“We can’t tell based on the data we have – based on the photographs or the video or the radar we have – whether it was a drone or a balloon, whether it was an aircraft,” said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) of difficulty in identifying some of the previously detected unidentified aerial objects. Gillibrand wrote legislation to help fund better investigations of these objects.
The National Security Council and the Office of the Director for National Intelligence declined to comment. A second senior U.S. official presented the administration’s stance, arguing that it has a good sense of how foreign governments are trying to surveil from the air but that it is still trying to determine whether hundreds of UAPs are spy tools or benign objects. The administration has shared with Congress in recent weeks a policy plan that will guide how it responds to aerial objects in the future, the official said.
When the Chinese balloon appeared over the U.S. in late January, officials described it as a surveillance device and said it had lingered over sensitive military sites, forcing the administration to shoot it down a week later. Officials also said that Chinese surveillance balloons had transited the U.S. at least three times during the Trump administration.
In the days that followed, three other aerial objects appeared over North America and the administration shot those down, too, even though officials said they posed no security threats.
Lawmakers say the administration has not made clear to Congress why it decided to start downing the UAPs.
Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) said he was not surprised that China used a balloon to spy on America. What was frustrating, he said, was that when it came to the Chinese spy balloon, it appeared “we didn’t have, at that point, a clear policy on what to do.”
Journalists and lawmakers pressed the administration for answers: Why did this particular Chinese balloon require a public response? And if the U.S. was worried about this one balloon, how many others have potentially already obtained imagery and other sensitive details about American military installations?
Officials at the North American Aerospace Defense Command, which shot down the Chinese surveillance balloon, have said that there was a “domain awareness gap” when it came to the office’s detection of balloons during the Trump administration and the early days of the Biden administration.
And in a congressional hearing March 8, Gen. Glen VanHerck, the commander of NORAD, said the three objects shot down in the days following the emergence of the Chinese spy balloon “clearly demonstrated the challenges associated with detecting and identifying unmanned objects in U.S. airspace.”
“I commit to you that this event has already generated critical lessons learned for my commands and our mission partners,” he said.
But officials have so far not provided details about current U.S. gaps in detection. Lawmakers want to know, for example, whether the radar and sensors the U.S. had in place prior to the shooting down of the Chinese surveillance balloon allowed for officials to see the full-range of objects floating above commercial airspace.
Susan Gough, a spokesperson for the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office — the team that investigates unidentified flying objects and other phenomena in the air — said the office is “reviewing the associated data of all past cases” in a “newly developed analytic framework.” Gough declined to provide details on the specifications of that framework but said AARO is working to “fill existing gaps.”
“UAP are objects that cannot be immediately identified and may exhibit anomalous behavior. Anomalous behavior means that DoD operators or sensors cannot make immediate sense of collected data, actions or activities,” Gough said.
An unclassified report from the Office of the Director for National Intelligence from last year said that there are at least 171 “uncharacterized and unattributed UAP reports.”
Many of the UAP reports came from Navy and the Air Force pilots who witnessed the aerial objects while flying, the report said. The U.S. also uses radar to detect the objects, but that often doesn’t provide enough detail to identify clearly what type of object it is.
It’s not clear whether the problem is simply about the limits of technology, or also about how the Pentagon and other agencies have decided to prioritize and parse data.
Gillibrand said there is a push among some officials and lawmakers to have “longer-term, more persistent awareness” of the area above commercial airspace to better track drone and balloon technology.
However, the administration has yet to decide how and whether to rejigger its approach to tracking and shooting down the objects, including whether it wants to set new thresholds in its systems that would allow for officials to more easily detect a larger number of UAPs at any given time. Those discussions have been viewed internally as slowing down the analysis of historical UAP data, the official said.
Lawmakers are actively pushing for more information from the administration. The Senate plans to hold a public hearing on the topic in April.
It’s unclear how forthright the administration will be in its conversations with Congress about its investigative work. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters on March 7 that “there might be very little at all” that the administration can reveal about the Chinese balloon debris collection efforts. “I’ve set no expectation that there’s going to be some big public rollout of what we’ve learned,” he said.
[ad_2]
#Biden #administration #isnt #telling #Congress #spy #balloons
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Initially, the objects were showing up on our newly upgraded radars and we assumed they were “ghosts in the machine,” or software glitches. But then we began to correlate the radar tracks with multiple surveillance systems, including infrared sensors that detected heat signatures. Then came the hair-raising near misses that required us to take evasive action.
These were no mere balloons. The unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) accelerated at speeds up to Mach 1, the speed of sound. They could hold their position, appearing motionless, despite Category 4 hurricane-force winds of 120 knots. They did not have any visible means of lift, control surfaces or propulsion — in other words nothing that resembled normal aircraft with wings, flaps or engines. And they outlasted our fighter jets, operating continuously throughout the day. I am a formally trained engineer, but the technology they demonstrated defied my understanding.
After that near-miss, we had no choice but to submit a safety report, hoping that something could be done before it was too late. But there was no official acknowledgement of what we experienced and no further mechanism to report the sightings — even as other aircrew flying along the East coast quietly began sharing similar experiences. Our only option was to cancel or move our training, as the UAP continued to maneuver in our vicinity unchecked.
Nearly a decade later we still don’t know what they were.
When I retired from the Navy in 2019, I was the first active-duty pilot to come forward publicly and testify to Congress. In the years since, there has been some notable coverage of the encounters and Congress has taken some action to force the military and intelligence agencies to do much more to get to the bottom of these mysteries.
But there has not been anything near the level of public and official attention that has been paid to the recent shoot downs of a Chinese spy balloon and the three other unknown objects that were likely research balloons.
And that’s a problem.
Advanced objects demonstrating cutting-edge technology that we cannot explain are routinely flying over our military bases or entering restricted airspace.
“UAP events continue to occur in restricted or sensitive airspace, highlighting possible concerns for safety of flight or adversary collection activity,” the Director of National Intelligence reported last month, citing 247 new reports over the last 17 months. “Some UAP appeared to remain stationary in winds aloft, move against the wind, maneuver abruptly, or move at considerable speed, without discernible means of propulsion.”
The Navy has also officially acknowledged 11 near misses with UAP that required evasive action and triggered mandatory safety reports between 2004 and 2021.Advanced UAP also pose a growing safety hazard to commercial airliners. Last May, the Federal Aviation Administration issued an alert after a passenger aircraft flying over West Virginia experienced a rare failure of two major systems while passing underneath what appeared to be a UAP.
One thing we do know is these craft aren’t part of some classified U.S. project. “We were quite confident that was not the explanation,” Scott Bray, the deputy director of the Office of Naval Intelligence, testified before Congress last year.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio confirmed in a recent interview that whatever the origin of these objects it is not the U.S. military. “We have things flying over our military bases and places where we’re conducting military exercises and we don’t know what it is and it isn’t ours,” said Rubio, who is vice chair of the Intelligence Committee.
President Joe Biden rightly points out the real national security and aviation safety risks, from “foreign intelligence collection” to “hazard to civilian air traffic,” that arise from low-tech “balloon-like” entities. I applaud his new order to create an interagency UAP taskforce and a government-wide effort to address unidentified objects, and his proposal to make sure all aerial craft are registered and identifiable according to a global standard is good common-sense.
However, what the president did not address during his press conference Feb. 16 were the UAP that exhibit advanced performance capabilities. Where is the transparency and urgency from the administration and Congress to investigate highly advanced objects in restricted airspace that our military cannot explain? How will this new taskforce be more effective than existing efforts if we are not being clear and direct about the scope and nature of advanced UAP?
The American public must demand accountability. We need to understand what is in our skies — period.
In the coming days, I will launch Americans for Safe Aerospace (ASA), a new advocacy organization for aerospace safety and national security. ASA will support pilots and other aerospace professionals who are reporting UAP. Our goal is to demand more disclosure from our public officials about this significant safety and national security problem. We will provide credible voices, public education, grassroots activism and lobbying on Capitol Hill to get answers about UAP.
President Biden needs to address this issue as transparently as possible. The White House should not conflate the low-tech objects that were recently shot down with unexplained high-tech, advanced objects witnessed by pilots. Our government needs to admit that it is possible another country has developed game-changing technology. We need to urgently address this threat by bringing together the best minds in our military, intelligence, science and tech sectors. If advanced UAP are not foreign drones, then we absolutely need a robust scientific inquiry into this mystery. Obfuscation and denial are a recipe for more conspiracy theories and greater distrust that stymie our search for the truth.
We need a coordinated, data-driven response that unites the public and private sectors. The North American Aerospace Defense Command, the U.S. Space Force and a host of other military and civilian agencies need to be marshaled in support of a much more aggressive and vigilant effort, along with our scientific community and private industry.
Right now, the pieces of the UAP puzzle are scattered across silos in the military, government and the private sector. We need to integrate and analyze these massive data sets with new methods like AI. We also need to make this data available to the best scientists outside of government.
We have strong supporters of more data sharing. Sen. Rubio has suggested the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), which was set up by Congress last year, share its data on unidentified objects with academic institutions and civilian scientific organizations. The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the Galileo Project at Harvard, tech startups like Enigma Labs, and traditional defense contractors could all play a role.
Unfortunately, all UAP reports and videos are classified, meaning active-duty pilots cannot come forward publicly and FOIA requests are denied. These are two major steps backwards for transparency, but they can be mitigated with data-sharing.
I am impressed by the recent whistleblower protections enacted last year to encourage more pilots and others to come forward, and I support the fresh push by Rubio and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) for full funding of AARO. Given the stakes, Congress also needs to fund grants for more scientific inquiry of UAP.
Above all, we need to listen to pilots. Military and civilian pilots provide critical, first-hand insights into advanced UAP. Right now, the stigma attached to reporting UAP is still too strong. Since I came forward about UAP in 2019, only one other pilot from my squadron has gone public. Commercial pilots also face significant risks to their careers for doing so.
New rules are needed to require civilian pilots to report UAP, protect the pilots from retribution, and a process must be established for investigating their reports. Derision or denial over the unknown is unacceptable. This is a time for curiosity.
If the phenomena I witnessed with my own eyes turns out to be foreign drones, they pose an urgent threat to national security and airspace safety. If they are something else, it must be a scientific priority to find out.
[ad_2]
#Real #UFO #Problem #Balloons
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
U.S. officials still haven’t said what the three objects were, but President Joe Biden said Thursday they were “most likely balloons” connected to either private companies or involving scientific research.
“When I heard that [it was a] silver object with a payload attached to it, that could be one of our balloons,” a member of the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade told POLITICO in a phone interview. The member was granted anonymity because the group has agreed not to talk to the media.
Government officials have reached out to some of the hobby group’s members, the person said. On Thursday, a spokesperson for the North American Aerospace Defense Command said the FBI had contacted the club but did not provide more details. The FBI did not return a request to comment.
National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters on Friday that the U.S. can’t confirm reports that the balloon belongs to the club. “We haven’t recovered it so it’s very difficult until you can get your hands on something to be able to tell,” he said. “I mean we all have to accept the possibility that we may not be able to recover it.”
For months, the hobby group tracked its balloon using an antenna attached to the craft, using GPS to estimate where it was. Based on their data, the balloon should have been over Alaska when it went offline.
But hundreds, if not thousands, of objects are floating in that jet stream at any given time, so no one can be sure what was shot down unless you “go through the Yukon and trudge through the snow,” the member said.
“Think about it. We know where the balloon was off the coast of Alaska. We know where it was, if all was well,” the member said. “We know that it didn’t wake up that morning. We know [American forces] shot something down, and the thing they described as having shot down is not inconsistent with what we’re flying out there. So, that’s that.”
Balloons flown by the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade are no different from the $10 to $15 balloons children buy for parties, the person said. They’re not specifically designed for scientific purposes. The Sidewinder missile used by the Air Force to shoot down the object over the Yukon costs roughly $400,000.
“Unless it has Mickey Mouse ears and F-22 pilots got sharp eyes and can discern that, it’s not clear exactly what you’re looking at. But the point is that it is not at all a huge reach,” to assume it’s the group’s balloon, the member said.
Kirby said the U.S. stands by the decision to shoot down the objects.
“Given the situation we were in, the information available, the recommendation of our military commanders, it was exactly the right thing to do at exactly the right time,” he said.
“And, frankly, given the circumstances in light of what happened with the spy balloon, wouldn’t that be a better outcome, if it turns out that they were in fact, civilian, or recreational use, or weather balloon and therefore benign, which is what the intelligence community thinks,” Kirby added. “Isn’t that a better outcome than to have to … to think about the possibility of greater threats to our national security?”
While it’s unfortunate that the balloon is missing, the person said it’s better for the U.S. to be safe than sorry when it comes to protecting its airspace.
“I’m an American and I don’t want anything bad to happen to our country. If they don’t know, I’d rather that they err in shooting down $100 worth of balloon stuff than have something bad go over Canada or the United States,” the member said, adding that they’re “not angry at all.”
Kelly Garrity, Lee Hudson and Lawrence Ukenye contributed to this report.
[ad_2]
#balloons #Hobbyist #downed #object #belong #amateur #club
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
GUTEN MORGEN, Grüß Gott and Servus from Bavaria! Welcome to our special Munich Security conference edition of Playbook with that latest news, analysis and gossip from what some affectionately refer to as the “Davos with guns” festival.
We’re smack dab in the middle of the three-day gathering of the global security elite, where (almost) all talk is centered around the consequences of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine one year ago. Let’s dive in.
BREAKING
‘CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY’: The United States has determined that Russia is committing crimes against humanity in Ukraine, Vice President Kamala Harris announced Saturday, the latest salvo in the West’s effort to hold Moscow accountable for its wartime atrocities.
In a marquee address at the Munich Security Conference, Harris detailed that Russia is responsible for a “widespread and systematic attack” against Ukraine’s civilian population, citing evidence of execution-style killings, rape, torture and forceful deportations — sometimes perpetrated against children. As a result, Russia has not only committed war crimes, as the administration formally concluded in March, but also illegal acts against non-combatants.
**A message from Google: The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing war have created a humanitarian disaster, damaged critical infrastructure, upended energy markets and supply chains, and left hundreds of thousands dead or wounded. See how we’re helping people affected by the war in Ukraine.**
Here’s the line: “The United States has formally determined that Russia has committed crimes against humanity,” Harris told the conference just now. Alex Ward has the story.
EUROPE’S LINES
DAVID AND GOLIATH: A year after he came to Munich looking for help as Russian tanks lined up on the Ukrainian border, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy returned via video link to open on the conference on Friday. As the war enters its second year, Zelenskyy — who in 2022 declared “someone is lying” to a Munich audience still in denial about Putin’s true intentions — turned instead to a familiar parable from the Bible.
“The Russian Goliath has already begun to lose,” Zelenskyy said, sitting in his trademark olive green sweatshirt behind a desk in Kyiv.
Speed kills: Even as he thanked the U.S. and Europe for the weapons they’ve sent to help Ukraine defend itself, Zelenskyy made an urgent plea for more, stressing that “speed was crucial.”
Butt out Belarus: He also warned President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus not to get directly involved in the war, as the bellicose Belarusian suggested he might do earlier this week. Zelenskyy said he was confident that local opposition in Belarus to participating Putin’s quest to build a new Russian empire would hold Lukashenko back.
POT OR KETTLE? MSC chairman Christoph Heusgen asked Zelenskyy in a brief Q&A after his speech about his battle against “endemic corruption.” Given the MSC’s own struggles in that department and its recent “outreach” for Qatar, it’s a question perhaps better put to the gray-haired men behind the MSC.
Or they could just consult McKinsey: As promised in yesterday’s Playbook our exposé on the interplay between the MSC and McKinsey is online. Over the past decade, the U.S.-based consultancy has quietly influenced the agenda of the conference, steering everything from the focus of its marquee report to the event’s program, to the guest lists. It gives McKinsey the opportunity to push narratives that serve the firm’s client base, be they in defense, the energy sector or government, people close the conference say. The full story is out now.
NO MORE SCHOLZING: Countries able to send battle tanks to Ukraine should “actually do so now,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Friday, trying to rally support for a Europe-wide fleet of tank donations. Scholz, whose own dithering on the question of sending main battle tanks to Ukraine spawned the German verb scholzen (to Scholz), rebutted his critics in an address to the Munich crowd, calling out NATO partners that have overpromised and underdelivered on the tanks front.
Olaf’s bazooka: Scholz also declared that Germany would “permanently” adhere to the NATO goal of spending 2 percent of its economic output on defense — a target that Berlin is currently set to miss this year and probably also next year, despite a massive €100 billion special fund for military investment. Of course, Germany has made similar pledges before only to break them. But still!
Pissing on the chips: That’s what Brits would call what German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius did on Friday. While his boss was vowing German “leadership” and making new pledges, Pistorius made clear two percent wasn’t enough: “It must be clear to everyone: It will not be possible to fulfill the tasks that lie ahead of us with barely two percent,” Pistorius said. More by Hans von der Burchard
LE SNUB: Scholz was followed onstage by French President Emmanuel Macron. But instead of a hug, a handshake or just a wave and “bonjour,” there was nothing. Rien. The two men appeared to not to have encountered one another at all, in fact, underscoring the ongoing tensions on the Paris-Berlin axis. The two have been at loggerheads for months over everything from energy policy to defense.
For all the thinly veiled resentment and behind-the-curtain sniping on Friday, the overall message from both Macron and Scholz was one of unity and solidarity with Ukraine. How fast Ukraine will get the tanks and other weapons it needs to fend off Russia’s spring offensive is another question, however.
ALLIANCES (AND LACK THEREOF)
CHINA TO EUROPE: COLD WAR IS NIGH, BUT WE CAN STOP IT. China’s chief representative in Munich had his message ready for European leaders and officials: You can avert Cold War.
“The cold war mentality is back,” Wang Yi, Beijing’s top diplomat, said. “China and Europe are two major forces, markets and civilizations in an increasingly multipolar world. The choices we make have a huge impact on where the world goes … Making the right choice is a responsibility we share,” he said.
Dodged #1: When asked whether Wang would rule out an invasion of Taiwan, the Chinese leader instead went in hard in stressing China’s position on the island’s status and slammed U.S. and allies for focusing on its integrity.
Dodged #2: Wang did not answer the MSC’s Wolfgang Ischinger’s question whether he plans to sit down with the U.S. delegation in Munich. (The two sides have talked about a Blinken-Yi meeting for some days but there’s no signs of a breakthrough just yet.)
One line that popped: “Any increase in China’s strength is an increase in the hope for world peace.”
Another line that popped: The U.S. decision to shoot down China’s surveillance balloon was “absurd and hysterical. This is 100 percent abuse of the use of force.”
What else popped? The balloon, earlier this month.
STOLTENBERG TURNS THE TABLES: Just minutes after China’s chief diplomat left the stage, NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg was quick to counter Beijing’s pleas, telling the audience it should project the lessons from Russia’s invasion in Ukraine on its dealings with China next.
“What is happening in Europe today … could happen in east Asia tomorrow,” the military alliance chief said, hinting at concerns about Beijing launching an invasion of Taiwan. Moscow, Stoltenberg underscored, “wants a different Europe” while Beijing “is watching closely to see the price Russia pays — or the reward it receives for its aggression.” Lili Bayer has the story.
FINLAND STICKS WITH SWEDEN: Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin reiterated her country’s desire to join NATO together with Sweden, saying it was in “the interest of everyone.” Except, it would appear Turkey, which continues to block Sweden’s bid over Stockholm’s refusal to extradite Kurdish activists Ankara claims are terrorists.
WHAT’S THE EU TO DO? Feed the military-industrial complex. That was the message from European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen who called on the defense industry in her Munich speech Saturday to “speed up the production and scale up the production” of weapons for Ukraine.
WHAT’S THE ICC TO DO? Chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Karim Khan is still insisting The Hague-based ICC is the appropriate judicial venue to hold Russia accountable for war crimes in Ukraine, telling POLITICO’s Jamie Dettmer in an exclusive interview the court does have jurisdiction and can mount cases. “Of course, it’s clear. We have that jurisdiction, and we are being very active,” he said.
PROGRAMMING
WE’RE NOT DONE. Here’s a couple of sessions coming up that are bound to pique your interest. (Full schedule and livestream here.)
Saturday
— U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak explains “the U.K. in the world.” (As opposed to the usual explaining it “to” the world.)
— U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken headlines a panel on “Whole, Free, and at Peace: Visions for Ukraine.”
— German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius discussed “Fostering Resilience in Europe’s North-East” with Norwegian PM Jonas Gahr Støre and Latvian President Egils Levits.
— U.S. climate envoy John Kerry talks about “Greener Pastures: Advancing Joint Climate Action.”
— Ruslan Stefanchuk, Chairman of Ukrainian parliament and U.S. Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi on “ The Role of Parliaments in War”
Sunday
— EU foreign policy czar Josep Borrell on “Visions for the European Security Architecture.”
FROM INSIDE THE HOF
PASSLESS AGGRESSIVE: In German, “Bayerischer Hof” (the 19th century hotel that hosts the MSC) means “Bavarian court,” a nod to its founding under the patronage of King Ludwig I.
It’s an apt venue for an event that is also run like a royal court. All participants are “personal guests” of the chairman. That includes members of the fourth estate. Those who write nice things about the event are rewarded with free access to the conference. Some are even invited to the sumptuous Schloss Elmau, “a luxury spa retreat and cultural hideaway” in the Alps, where the MSC holds its “most exclusive” gatherings for policymakers and titans of industry.
And then there are those of us who fall out of favor with the powers that be for committing the sin of journalism. So it was that your humble ink-stained wretch arrived in Munich to discover that his privileges had been revoked! Instead of a coveted blue pass allowing him free reign, he was handed a dreaded yellow pass for the great unwashed masses of hacks and directed to a large container half a kilometer away from the venue.
To add insult to injury, his pass is stamped in red letters with a warning: “Escort Required.” (And no, it’s not a reference to evening entertainment.)
Fear not, dear reader. We have our spies in the hotel feeding us the latest tidbits of what’s happening inside the Kaiser Ischinger’s royal court. Speaking of which…
WHERE’S THE BEEF? Yesterday, multiple attendees complained that while there were no shortage of beverages inside, there was a shortage of food, which may or may not have something to do with the large American delegation in attendance.
DISINFORMATION: We erroneously reported in yesterday’s Playbook that Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba would be addressing the opening day of the conference. It was, of course, Zelenskyy. Mea maxi culpa. The responsible party has been duly punished.
SPOTTED: Disgraced former Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, now an emissary for Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, loitering in the halls of the Bayerischer Hof.
Over 150 guests stopped by our POLITICO and Goals House nightcap on Friday for a drink or two and good chat at the fancy Schreiberei in central Munich. Among those welcomed by POLITICO’s Florian Eder were Belgian Prime Minister Alexander de Croo; deputy Lithuanian Foreign Minister Jonas Survila; Jörg Kukies of the German federal chancellery; Bundestag members Roderich Kiesewetter, Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, Sara Nani,Thomas Erndl, Andreas Scheuer, MEPs Eva Maydell and Markus Ferber; Gayle Smith, CEO of the ONE Campaign, Anja Langenbucher of the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, and author and politician Sawsan Chebli; former Finnish Prime Minister Alexander Stubb, director of the School of Transnational Governance in Florence, Ngaire Woods, dean of the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford; U.S. Assistant Secretary of Treasury Paul Rosen; former chief of the U.K.’s National Cyber Security Centre Ciaran Martin, partner at Krebs Stamos Chris Krebs; Ralph Heck of the Bertelsmann Foundation; Manuel Hartung of the Zeit-Stiftung; Lithiania’s Viktorija Urbonavičiūtė, Michael Hinterdobler of the Bavarian state government; Gavi CEO Seth Berkley; Huberta von Voss of ISD Germany; Justin Vaïsse of the Paris Peace Forum; the SWP’s Stefan Mair; Bart Kot of the Warsaw Security Forum; Microsoft’s Christopher Sharrock; Ericsson’s Rene Summer; ITI’s Executive VP Rob Strayer; fellow journalists Gordon Repinski, Stefan Leifert, Benedikt Becker, Andrew Gray, John Hudson; POLITICO’s Matthew Karnitschnig, Jamie Dettmer, Laurens Cerulus, Hans von der Burchard, Andrew Ward and Paul McLeary.
OUR MUNICH PLAYBOOK wouldn’t happen without Laurens Cerulus, Cory Bennett, Heidi Vogt, Dave Brown and Jones Hayden.
**A message from Google: Since the war began, governments, companies, civil society groups and countless others have been working around the clock to support the Ukrainian people and their institutions. At Google, we support these efforts. Our priority has been to stand by the Ukrainian people, the Ukrainian government, and those who are still facing deadly attacks and the realities of life in an active war zone — and against forces seeking to undermine the peace and security of Europe and the stability of the international system. For more on how Google is helping people affected by the war in Ukraine, read here.**
SUBSCRIBE to the POLITICO newsletter family: Brussels Playbook | London Playbook | London Playbook PM | Playbook Paris | POLITICO Confidential | Sunday Crunch | EU Influence | London Influence | Digital Bridge | China Direct | Berlin Bulletin | D.C. Playbook | D.C. Influence | Global Insider | All our POLITICO Pro policy morning newsletters
Diplomatic friction has worsened between the United States and China after Beijing claimed, without evidence, that US high-altitude balloons flew over its Xinjiang and Tibet regions, and threatened unspecified measures against US entities for undermining Chinese sovereignty.
Washington and Beijing are locked in a tussle over flying objects after the US military this month shot down what it called a Chinese spy balloon over the coast of South Carolina. Beijing said it was a civilian research vehicle mistakenly blown off course, and that Washington overreacted.
This week, China has claimed US balloons have flown over its airspace without permission more than 10 times on round-the-world flights since May 2022. The White House has disputed this. Beijing has not produced any evidence or specifics of its claims, but on Wednesday claimed US balloons were spotted over the highly securitised regions of Tibet and Xinjiang where Beijing is accused of extensive human rights abuses against the non-Han population.
“Without the approval of relevant Chinese authorities, it has illegally flown at least 10 times over China’s territorial airspace, including over Xinjiang, Tibet and other provinces,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin told a regular daily briefing on Wednesday.
The US deputy secretary of state, Wendy Sherman, reiterated that China’s claims about US balloons were false.
“They have now said that there have been a gazillion balloons by the US over China. That is absolutely not true. There are no US government balloons over China,” she told an event at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
Wang also accused Japan’s government of making “unfounded allegations” after the saga prompted the defence ministry in Tokyo to reanalyse sightings of unidentified aerial objects since November 2019.
The ministry announced late on Tuesday that new analysis “strongly” suggested they were Chinese spy balloons and it had “strongly demanded China’s government confirm the facts”.
Wang accused Japan of “smearing” China “without any solid evidence … China has repeatedly shared information on the unintended entry of a Chinese civilian unmanned airship into US airspace. Japan should adopt an objective and just position, view this unexpected incident caused by force majeure in the right way, and stop following the US’s suit in dramatising it.”
Washington has added six Chinese entities to an export blacklist over connections to Beijing’s suspected surveillance balloon programme. Wang called the sanctions illegal. “China is firmly opposed to this and will take countermeasures against relevant US entities that undermine China’s sovereignty and security in accordance with the law,” Wang said, without specifying the measures.
The balloon dispute has delayed efforts by both sides to try to patch up frayed relations, although Joe Biden, the US president, has said he does not believe ties between the two countries have been weakened.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, who postponed a planned trip to Beijing over the balloon, is considering meeting China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, in Munich this week, sources have said.
His deputy, Wendy Sherman, said on Wednesday that communication with China had not stopped but gave no details about any future high-level meetings.
“We hope when conditions make sense that we will be seeing each other face-to-face again. No announcements today,” she said.
With Reuters
[ad_2]
#China #claims #balloons #flew #Tibet #Xinjiang #spying #row #rumbles
( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
Now Bolton, who is weighing a 2024 presidential run, promised to “ask for all the details, top to bottom, on what the record indicates about Chinese or other aerial incursions during the Trump administration.”
“I want to know whether overflights during the Trump administration were detected or not detected. If they were detected, what were they assessed to be, and who made that assessment? How far up the chain of command did the information and assessments go?” he continued.
Bolton first discussed his upcoming briefing with NBC News.
The former U.N. ambassador blasted Biden’s team, specifically National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby, for continually bringing up the Trump-era balloon flights. “If the White House thinks this is a way to build confidence in their response to the recent incursions, it is sadly mistaken,” he said.
Kirby responded to Bolton’s comments during a session with reporters Tuesday. “All we’re doing is speaking the truth. This is a well-funded, deliberate program to collect intelligence on other nations, including us,” he said. “The reason we know that is because of the work we’ve done since we came into office to understand this program” and “decipher how these balloons operate”
Kirby further told reporters that the three objects hovering above the U.S. and Canada and shot down by the military last weekend could be “balloons tied to some commercial work.”
Biden administration officials briefed senators Tuesday morning on the latest information regarding the Chinese spy balloon and the downed objects.
[ad_2]
#John #Bolton #details #briefing #Trumpera #balloons
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Today, the history of the Fu-Go balloons holds three important lessons for the leaders of China and the United States as they navigate the current crisis.
First, there is something about unseen, high-altitude objects that invites a degree of alarm out of proportion to their direct harm for national security. Like the Fu-Go balloons, initial indications suggest that the military value of China’s spy balloons is minimal. But their impact on public perception and alarm has been hard to overstate.
Witness the reaction of Democratic Sen. Jon Tester of Montana, where the balloon was first spotted, who said, “We think we know what they were going to collect, but we don’t know. That scares the hell out of me.” Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, meanwhile, ripped Defense officials at a hearing for not acting when the balloon was above her state: “It’s like this administration doesn’t think that Alaska is any part of the rest of the country!” Beijing — or any other nation tempted to release high-altitude objects into American airspace — must understand this special sensitivity and take any measures necessary to avoid repeat spy balloon incursions.
A second lesson is that balloons can be surprisingly stealthy weapons. It took U.S. authorities several months to piece together Japan’s balloon bomb plot. China’s high-altitude balloons, meanwhile, appear to have exploited what a senior Air Force officer called a “domain awareness gap” — meaning the balloons passed through holes in America’s existing air defenses. Such gaps are especially concerning if, as in the 1940s, they create new avenues for adversaries to attack U.S. territory.
China, which possesses far more sophisticated weaponry than balloons, including hypersonic missiles, has little reason to exploit these gaps to mount an actual attack — but terrorists or rogue states might. That is of no less concern to national security experts. At a minimum, the prospect of weaponization is likely to increase the risk of confrontation, whether between the U.S. and China or another aerial adversary, in the event of any future airborne incursions. Leaders on all sides must redouble their efforts to strengthen crisis communication channels to defuse any future incidents as quickly as possible.
A third, final and much happier lesson of the Fu-Go balloons is that crisis and conflict can eventually be transformed into cooperation and even comity. Indeed, the story of the Fu-Go balloon bombs had a surprisingly happy ending, thanks to the actions of individual Americans and Japanese who worked to transform wartime tragedy into postwar partnership. In the 1980s, residents of Bly, Ore., which suffered the only casualties caused by the balloon bombs, began a correspondence with Japanese citizens involved in producing the bombs. The former American and Japanese antagonists even held a poignant in-person meeting in Bly after the war.
We must hope that a similar ending emerges from this latest crisis in U.S.-China relations. Fortunately, both sides have an opportunity to ensure that it does. Though blighted by the balloon incident, China recently re-opened itself to foreigners without onerous quarantine and Covid testing requirements for the first time in almost three years. This long overdue opening should be cause for celebration and a resumption of frayed people-to-people ties. In the coming months, large numbers of American businesspeople, researchers, students, journalists and others are likely to travel to China once again. Leaders in both Washington and Beijing must create the space for this exchange to thrive, whatever differences exist between the two governments. China, for its part, must start by preventing any further aerial incursions into U.S. airspace.
More than anything, the history of the Fu-Go balloons shows that when tensions are as high as they are between the U.S. and China, countries must use people-to-people ties to better ground their rocky relationship — or risk subjecting the world to far greater turbulence.
[ad_2]
#Opinion #Time #America #Attacked #Balloons
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
While such objects “at times” have gone through U.S. airspace, the current scale is unprecedented, Turner said.
“It’s certainly a new, recent development that you have China being so aggressive in entering other countries’ air space and doing so for clear intentions to spy, with very sophisticated equipment,” he said.
Turner said the incidents speak to a larger issue of airspace defense for the U.S., including “inadequate” radar and a lack of an integrated missile defense system.
“This is a turning point where we need to discuss — this is a threat, and how do we respond to it?” he said.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Sunday continued to defend the Biden administration’s timing on shooting down the first balloon, which crossed North America before an F-22 downed it off the coast of the Carolinas.
“We got enormous intelligence information from surveilling the balloon as it went over the United States,” Schumer said on ABC’s “This Week,” adding that the U.S. will “probably be able to piece together” the entire balloon to learn more.
Asked by host George Stephanopoulos whether China gained intelligence regardless, Schumer said: “They could have been getting it anyway, but we have to know what they’re doing.”
[ad_2]
#Intel #chair #hed #Biden #trigger #happy #balloons
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Rep. Mike Turner, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, called for an aggressive stance on taking down airborne objects on Sunday, after the U.S. shot down multiple objects in North American airspace in recent weeks.
“I would prefer them to be trigger-happy than to be permissive,” Turner (R-Ohio) said of the Biden administration, speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “But we’re going to have to see whether or not this is just the administration trying to change headlines.”
Following criticism for moving too slowly in taking down a Chinese spy balloon that floated over the U.S. earlier this month, the Biden administration downed an unidentified cylindrical object over Alaskan airspace, and — after discussion with Canada — shot down a separate object violating Canadian airspace Saturday.
While such objects “at times” have gone through U.S. airspace, the current scale is unprecedented, Turner said.
“It’s certainly a new, recent development that you have China being so aggressive in entering other countries’ air space and doing so for clear intentions to spy, with very sophisticated equipment,” he said.
Turner said the incidents speak to a larger issue of airspace defense for the U.S., including “inadequate” radar and a lack of an integrated missile defense system.
“This is a turning point where we need to discuss — this is a threat, and how do we respond to it?” he said.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Sunday continued to defend the Biden administration’s timing on shooting down the first balloon, which crossed North America before an F-22 downed it off the coast of the Carolinas.
“We got enormous intelligence information from surveilling the balloon as it went over the United States,” Schumer said on ABC’s “This Week,” adding that the U.S. will “probably be able to piece together” the entire balloon to learn more.
Asked by host George Stephanopoulos whether China gained intelligence regardless, Schumer said: “They could have been getting it anyway, but we have to know what they’re doing.”
[ad_2]
#Intel #chair #hed #Biden #trigger #happy #balloons
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
“This never happened. It would have never happened,” Trump told Fox News on Sunday.
“I’m not aware of a single civilian national security leader from the Trump administration who heard of this,” said a Trump administration national security official, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence issues.
The backlash came after senior Biden administration officials spoke to reporters about the Saturday operation that downed the Chinese spy balloon following its one-week traversal of the U.S. A senior DoD official said that similar devices entered American airspace three times during Trump’s tenure and once before during the current administration.
“I can confirm that there have been other incidents where balloons did come close to or cross over U.S. territory,” said Pentagon spokesperson Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder on Saturday, declining to provide additional information.
The difference, Defense Department officials said, is that those balloons never stayed above U.S. territory for a significant period of time. When pressed for specifics, such as the date, location and duration of those instances, Biden administration officials refused to provide them citing the classified nature of that information.
Some officials did speak in generalities, however. DoD tracks “hundreds” of balloons every day, but they are typically not deemed a threat. Their presence close to or over the United States would not be brought to the attention of senior leaders unless their behavior was “completely out of the ordinary, like this one,” said one senior Pentagon official.
At lower levels, officials have tracked multiple instances of balloon activity over U.S. territories in recent years. One of the Trump-era balloons hovered over Guam, according to two U.S. officials. And in 2020, the intelligence community assessed that far-smaller balloons detected off the coast of Virginia were Chinese radar-jamming devices, according to a former senior DoD official.
Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, tweeted Sunday that the office of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had informed his office that “several Chinese balloon incidents have happened in the past few years – including over Florida.”
“Why weren’t they shot down?” he added. “And according to several Trump Admin national security officials – they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.”
The other time a similar airship appeared with Biden in the White House was last February near Hawaii.
Other senior Biden administration officials say it’s possible senior Trump figures weren’t briefed on those incursions. In some cases, devices were smaller and were only in U.S. airspace for short periods of time — making them harder to detect. And in others, some surmised that the information didn’t filter up to the top because the overflights weren’t significant enough.
The events also may not have been discovered in real-time and only pieced together recently with intelligence after the fact. One senior administration official said the events went “undetected.”
“We’ve gotten better at detection over time,” a second senior Biden administration official said, noting that those responsible for surveilling Chinese spy balloons can remain in government even with a new president in the Oval Office.
But the Trump officials adamantly deny any of this ever happened. “I don’t ever recall somebody coming into my office or reading anything that the Chinese had a surveillance balloon above the United States,” Esper told CNN on Friday.
“This never happened in the first two years of the Trump administration,” a former senior DoD official said. A senior Trump intelligence official said nothing like what transpired over the past week happened during all four years of the previous administration.
Biden’s team has given no indication it will downgrade intelligence to prove there were past examples of Chinese spy balloons above the U.S. from 2017 to 2021.
All senators will receive a briefing on the just-downed vehicle’s flight on Feb. 15, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Sunday.
[ad_2]
#Trump #officials #deny #Chinese #spy #balloons #flew #U.S #watch
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
