What are the motives and significance of the Chinese spy balloon penetration of U.S. territory, and why now? First the backstory:
China’s military capability may soon rival that of the United States. What holds back Chinese President Xi Jinping from moving militarily on Taiwan are two things: First he may think that time is on his side, with Biden’s America in decline and a perception that a two-year window remains for action. Second, what holds Xi Jinping back is of course his concern that if the invasion fails, he would be removed by the CCP.
So, Xi continues to build Chinese military power capabilities while the U.S. deteriorates, and he bides his time while studying and calculating the range of responses from the U.S. that China would face from such an invasion.
The Chinese projection of power against the United States is shaped by two priorities. First, is their commitment to what is known as unrestricted warfare, one part of which emphasizes using multinational, non-state, and supranational organizations to counter the U.S. Toward this end, the Chinese now control the U.N.’s World Health Organization (WHO), which provides China with a proxy front to impose an unprecedented medical tyranny far exceeding the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns and controls. The second priority is the age-old Chinese military strategy that emphasizes “the supreme excellence of breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.” Even if the Chinese cannot match the U.S. military because of U.S. export controls on high-end semiconductors and advanced AI technology, Beijing believes their level of control in the U.S. can continue America’s demoralization and division—potentially leading to collapse. Said another way, China is delaying military action in hopes of breaking America without fighting.
As for engaging the U.S. militarily, Xi and his advisors study America’s past. They know the U.S. military’s masterful logistics can deliver swift and decisive enemy defeat, such as the Bush administration’s victory in the Gulf War in 1990-1991. But the Chinese also note the fecklessness of the Clinton and Obama administrations that followed, in which two U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed; Egyptian ally Hosni Mubarak was abandoned; the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya was destroyed, and ISIS appeared invincible after two and a half years of U.S. military engagement.
After Trump became president in January 2017 the Chinese witnessed a dramatic reversal. Within about a month of taking office Trump unleashed American power that decimated ISIS within weeks. A month later Trump ordered a strike of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles that took out Syria’s air force. And in early 2020 Trump authorized a drone strike in Iraq that killed Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard and the number two leader Iran.
Everything changed with the 2020 election—characterized by massive voting irregularities—that displaced Trump and delivered Joe Biden as U.S. President. What most voters didn’t know, but Xi Jinping did know, was that Biden was a compromised president. The Biden family had received—in prior years leading up to the election—tens of millions of dollars from Chinese business deals, and the Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement at the University of Pennsylvania had received $70 million from sources in China.
Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, a brilliant lawyer and the most successful prosecutor of the Mafia who conducted a forensic analysis of the Hunter Biden laptop and its contents, described the Biden Family as being “owned by the Chinese Communist Party,” and Joe Biden himself as being “in partnership with the Chinese Communist Party.”
The weakness Biden signaled as President, characterized by his inexplicable decision to abruptly withdraw from Afghanistan, leaving behind some $80 billion of advanced U.S. military equipment and abandoning the strategically located Bagram Air Base was naturally encouraging for Xi. Biden’s top military generals, Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chief General Mark Milley, who were involved in the Afghanistan decision-making fiasco, have also originated other harmful leadership initiatives, such as universal mandatory Covid-19 vaccination requirements and obligatory Critical Race Theory indoctrination for the officer corps and the enlistees in all military branches—both of which policies significantly added to the demoralization of the military—resulting in recruiting shortfalls—with all of it being observed and digested by the Chinese leadership.
Xi’s authorization of launching a spy balloon and have it fly over a broad swath of the United States, and hover over sensitive areas to collect intelligence data where nuclear warheads are siloed, was also intended to accomplish several important objectives for the Chinese:
First, the Chinese penetration by a spy balloon of U.S. territory succeeded in publicly humiliating America—reinforcing the lesson of Afghanistan to allies such as Taiwan—that the United States is unreliable—lacking courage and a comprehensive strategy to defend its own territory.
Second, the spy balloon was likely used to test America’s ability to detect incoming threats and to find holes in the country’s air defense warning system. The spy balloon first came into U.S. airspace over the sparsely populated Alaskan Aleutian Islands on January 28, where the U.S. military should have blown it out of the sky. Perhaps there’s a hole, as there was no response nor any scrambling of U.S. fighter jets.
Third, Beijing could see Biden’s weakness and willingness to defer power to subordinates in the response to his order to shoot the spy satellite down three days later, February 1st, when it entered Montana airspace. After giving the order, Biden passed the buck to military advisors who said “wait till the balloon crosses the country and gets to the Atlantic”—all of which prolonged the nation’s humiliation and demonstrated a fundamentally flawed decision-making process, which Beijing was no doubt testing. Said another way, Xi wanted to reconfirm Milley’s deference to China, which Milley had previously demonstrated twice in communicating critical national security information to Chinese leaders in December and January 2020-2021, without President Trump’s knowledge or consent.
All of this is the consequence of corruption and the 2020 election irregularity.
Scott Powell is a member of the Committee on the Present Danger China and senior fellow at Discovery Institute. His recent book, Rediscovering America, was #1 new release in history for eight straight weeks at Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/dp/1637581599). Reach him at scottp@discovery.org.
So why did they allow it to cross American Coast to Coast before they shot it down in South Carolina
Two reasons:
¹ Sleepy Joe is feckless & indecisive.
² Xi Jinping’s check cleared.
Spot on David! Also, everyone needs to remember that God is in control and that all of this needs to happen. This should not be a shocker to any of us that believes in the Lord.
Did you not read the article?
Did you read the article? LOL
the balloon foolishness is just another democrat/commie traitorous diversion from the Biden/DOJ/Dept.of Defense. cabal of corruption. The CCP has satellites that can watch you leave your house, they have Biden in their pocket, they have professors, business people and exchange students all over the country…………a balloon ? wake up folks…………The question is why do you believe anything they say when their track record is lie,lie, lie
The Biden DOJ/FBI should be renamed the DPSSAG — Democratic Party SS and Gestapo. Because that’s what they are.
To show the world that China owns Big Guy Biden?
Most of us don’t see the Chinese satellites surveiling our countryside.
Reasons are stated above. Find out which side Biden and his family and cohorts are on. Is there really any doubt?
Exactly. The options are:
a) We lacked the ability (Demonstrated to be false)
b) We lacked the will (Plausible with this administration’s demonstrated incompetence)
c) The Biden Administration was told not to by China.
Personally, given what we Truly know about Biden’s cozy financial relationship with China and Russia, I assume he was blackmailed and told to let it collect the data.
Joey knows that the CCP could expose his corruption and Hunter’s at any moment. Occam’s Razor.
they are in cahoots? by they I mean the whole administration
OMG..no wonder the USA is in trouble..you might want to read the article
Joe is on Xi Jinping’s payroll?
Ever heard of Crackhead Hunter and the Big Guy?
Because there’s a living cadaver in the WH pretending to be a president!!
Question: IF, and I stress IF, the Chinese Communist Party figured out that they only need to send money to the “Social Justice” warriors and the other self-appointed “Thought Leaders” within the US who have sworn a quasi-religious oath to “burn it down”…
Wouldn’t the CCP merely need to open their wallet for this investment?
It’s called “Omni-Directional Warfare” Think disco ball.
Ive read they bankroll a lot. Such as election so called non profits that do things like harvest votes in Democrat areas, run ads, etc. and fund Antifa itself (who Ive read receive extensive training in tech and in physical street warfare) – all this is funded by someone and it may often be CCP
If I were a Commie PLA general, I’d play 6-dimensional chess on America, and destroying their love of country would be paramount. Or, Disney…
The Soviets got to that one first. They had something like 48 goals for destroying the United States, such as “break up the nuclear family,” and “denigrate religion”. All of them have been accomplished.
While all of this is of course horribly and frighteningly true, one has to also look at the internal conditions in China right now. Crashing birth rate, economy on a huge bubble, vast corruption that no doubt has an impact on the military’s capability and weapons systems (among other things), and most importantly, a citizenry that is increasingly angry at the regime might be the “unknown known” that might be a game-changer.
For sure the 21st Century is NOT going to be the Chinese Century. Sadly, the fact that we have to rely on China collapsing before we do is cold comfort. And even if they collapse first, given the road we’re on, we’re not far behind.
That leaves Global Islam to enter the scene. Or the Davos crowd.
”For sure the 21st Century is NOT going to be the Chinese Century. Sadly, the fact that we have to rely on China collapsing before we do is cold comfort. And even if they collapse first, given the road we’re on, we’re not far behind.”
Extremely cold.
China has a plan and the will to succeed. We have no plan, and not even the will to survive.
If we are to turn this ship, it will take a man and a movement. A lot of cry babies are going to have to be told to shut up and get out of the way, because we know who is the man, and the name of the movement.
MAGA conservatives have a plan and a will to win. But, we’re not in power. (Rigged elections have consequences.)
You’re right about Sleepy Joe & leftists; they have no plan or will to resist. The fools assume their posh gated communities (like Martha’s Vineyard) will remain in tact/safe from communist take over, or the criminal thugs they let flood the streets.
Why didn’t the Canadians spot it, or do anything about it or alert the U.S.? To get from Alaska to Montana, it must have crossed CANADA!
You’re assuming that Canada didn’t spot & pass on the info. But consider that we have a feckless idiot in the Oval Office.
NORAD most likely had it spotted from the jump. But Sleeep Joe is well paid by the CCP, and could care less.
People annoyingly filming it in Montana forced the issue into public debate – resulting in Sleazy Joe shooting it down for a photo-op to save face . . . AFTER it had completed it’s mission.
You may be right. Maybe the Canadians alerted Biden and he did nothing.
Both of their fighter aircraft were down for maintenance.
The more this story evolves, especially the part about balloons during the Trump administration, the worse it gets. America now has to consider two infuriating and terrifying possibilities: One is the idea that we now have so many woke hacks in positions of power, that our military is broken beyond repair, and utterly incapable of defending America in any meaningful way. The other is the idea that the military part of permanent bureaucracy is utterly contemptuous of a constitution that vests the ultimate authority for all military decisions in the president, aka the commander-in-chief.
Either way, we’re screwed.
This is the result of decades of the pussyfication of the American male.
Ball sacks missing at EVERY level of society.
Go ahead…. prove me wrong.
There were no election irregularities of any significance. Mr. Powell is a liar, and I think he knows it.
BLACKMAILING FJB!
They got away with sending us the virus, to enable the voter fraud. A few balloons is easy to get away with.
It’s a Classic Case of”Pushing The Envelope”!
There is still no proof it was a “spy balloon,” only media say so. Why would China do it so overtly when they have satellites that can pick faces out of a crowd from outer space? It just doesn’t add up. I’m not buying it. Gee, what if it actually was what the Chinese said it was? Now, there’s a novel, albeit, not as exciting or article selling idea.🤔
People really need to just stop believing every little thing they’re told by media and running with it without researching it, no matter what media it is. I’ve found that most of them are clueless, and they ALL use fear to sell their stuff and to make profits. It’s time to wise up and wake up. Time to SHIFT.
“Why would China use a spy balloon rather than a satellite to survey US?” – New York Post
https://nypost.com/2023/02/06/why-would-china-use-a-spy-balloon-over-a-satellite/
LOL! China has satellites that view faces from a crowd ?! Now who’s believing the hype?
Communist China is a damn communist gangster mafia ruling a terrorized SLAVE PEN. Have you forgotten just a year ago before Russia invaded Ukraine the MSM had the whole world convinced Russia was as mighty, powerful, and dangerous as China?
Russia was in better economic and military shape than China is today and it has not been able to win a war against corrupt, incompetent, third-world country, Ukraine.
Stop believing the MSM hype about China, the MSM are all children of Walter Duranty, they’re all communist sympathizers, or are simply anti-American and anti-Western adolescent, teenage, hippies at heart.
Agree that false weather/spy balloon did not originate in China. It is a coordinated psyop to deflect blame away from complicit Western leadership in ”predicted” upcoming cyber attack.
Disagree that most Americans are globalists. Most emerging American adults if they survive the “vax” will be socialists due to educational and media indoctrination.
Chinese Bot says What?
Are you questioning the origin of the balloon, the complicity of Western government in the deception and deconstruction of Western civilization or both, MdlF?
Apparently the CCP has also opened an account here! Hey you Communist SOB are you enjoying your participation in our Democracy, or maybe you are enjoying the free speech that allows you to post your lies and fabrications? I know I wouldn’t be able to post MY point of view in YOUR hometown and be allowed to live!
The best overall analysis of-not only the Chinese balloon issue-but also how it relates to Chinese strategies. Insightful and thorough.
Thanks, Mr. Powell
The balloon was only to test citizen ahd elected official’s reaction.
Does the movie RED DAWN ring a bell? There are enough good people left in this country to react to any overt action against the US homeland. Not that I would want it to happen, but America would come out OK, maybe with a few scares. It would take a while to rebuild, but would be better than ever before.
Don’t be distracted by the balloon…Scott makes a plethora of insightful points.
It was one of the U.S.’s many treacheries against an ally when it recognized the PRC as the legitimate China and pushed Taiwan, the Republic of China, under the bus. It was at best a tragic mistake, and at worst a terrible betrayal of a loyal ally.
Biden did not want to shoot the balloon down before it completed its mission. He is the Commander in Chief and can make any decision he wants. Claiming the generals told him not to shoot it down over land was simply a cover. Remember, he made the decision to leave Afghanistan against his general’s almost unanimous advice. The Biden-Chinese strategy is to give Biden plausible deniability when he sides with China. He probably told the generals what to say to him.
MORTAL FWAIDY CATS ACYING LIKE WE ARE IMMORTAL
271701 303956educator, Sue. Although Sue had a list of discharge instructions in her hand, she paused and 156185