Tuesday, March 19

US claims Chinese spy balloons flew over country three times during Trump’s presidency


Updated

The Biden Administration claims that Chinese aerostats had already flown over the country, but the Republican kept it secret

The remains of the Chinese balloon plunged into the Atlantic Ocean on Saturday.PA
  • Espionage The new game of the old spy game between China and the United States

The Chinese spy balloon that the United States shot down on Saturday it was the fourth that violated the airspace of that country, as reported by the US Department of Defense. The other three cases, of which the authorities have not provided more information, occurred during the presidency of Donald Trump. The then highest president of the country decided to keep the incidents secret.

Biden’s team has admitted that those visits The Chinese ones were shorter than this one, in which the balloon passed like Pedro through his house thanks to its navigation devices controlled by artificial intelligence over the United States for four days. That again raises the question of why Beijing has carried out this operation. It is a provocation, an attempt to test US anti-aircraft defenses, a way of assessing the political will of the US government to Joe Biden?

No one seems to have the answer to those questions. What is clear is that this diplomatic crisis has scuttled Washington’s plans for Secretary of State Antony Blinken to achieve this week the reduction of Chinese support for Russia in its invasion of Ukraine, and some détente in the Straits. from Taiwan.

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In the three cases in which the balloons violated US airspace with Trump, they did so over more or less peripheral or coastal areas of the country. One of the places where one of these was observed astrostats -which is the name given to these aerostats due to the high altitude at which they operate- was the island of Guam, in the Marianas (a former Spanish colony which, paradoxically, continues to be so from a legal point of view, since there is no agreement between Madrid and Washington ratifying the change of sovereignty). In Guam, the United States has one of its largest air bases in the world, as well as a military port with the capacity to accommodate submarines and atomic aircraft carriers. In total, one third of the island is in the hands of the US Department of Defense.

Another high-altitude balloon (HAB) was sighted in Hawaii, the archipelago from which, along with Guam, the US coordinates its military presence in the Pacific. The third point is Florida. In all three cases, according to the information transmitted by the Pentagon, the balloons disappeared before they could be intercepted. Similar ships have been detected over Japan and in the vicinity of Taiwan.

The revelation made seems to be a response to criticism from some members of the Republican Party, starting with Donald Trump himself, who demanded that the balloon be shot down immediately. The former president has denied that these incidents had occurred. John Bolton, who was his National Security adviser for 16 months before becoming one of Trump’s biggest critics, has stated that no Chinese or other balloons violated US airspace during his term in office.

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