The United States is sharing information about China’s spy balloon program with dozens of nations after discovering a worldwide surveillance campaign led by the communist regime.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced the sharing of intelligence during a joint press conference with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg at the State Department in Washington on Feb. 8.
“We’ve already shared information with dozens of countries around the world, both from Washington and through our embassies,” Blinken said.
“We’re doing so because the United States is not the only target of the balloon program, which has violated the sovereignty of countries across five continents.”
The announcement follows the discovery of a Chinese surveillance balloon that traversed the continental United States in an apparent effort to spy on U.S. military facilities before ultimately being shot down by a U.S. fighter jet on Feb. 4.
Earlier on Feb. 8, Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder confirmed that new intelligence had allowed the United States to determine at least four previous spy balloon incursions over the United States, three of which occurred during the Trump administration and one of which occurred during the Biden administration.
Sovereignty, Territorial Integrity Violated
Asked whether the program was linked to China’s military or if Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping had previous knowledge, Blinken said the individuals are less relevant than the national threat posed by such a program.“As to who is responsible for that, China is,” Blinken said. “It doesn’t matter on some level which individuals may or may not have been responsible. The fact is China engaged in this irresponsible action in violation of our sovereignty and territorial integrity and international law.
“We are not alone in this. Countries across five continents have also had surveillance balloons overfly their territory, which is why we continue to share this information with others.”
Stoltenberg used the event to highlight communist China’s vast military expansion and modernization program, saying that the regime is recklessly attempting to enforce its illegal territorial claims and increasingly supporting Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine.
“China is substantially building up its military, including nuclear weapons, without any transparency,” he said. “It’s attempting to assert control over the South China Sea and threatening Taiwan, trying to take control of critical infrastructure including in NATO countries, repressing its own citizens and trampling their rights, and deepening its strategic partnership with Moscow.”
Stoltenberg noted that NATO nations in Europe also have been the target of covert Chinese intelligence collection activities, saying that the communist regime has established a destructive pattern of behavior internationally.
“The Chinese balloon over the United States confirms a pattern in Chinese behavior, where we see that China over the last years has invested heavily in new military capabilities including different types of intelligence and surveillance platforms,” he said.
“We’ve also seen increased Chinese intelligence activities in Europe, again [with] different platforms.”
Ultimately, Stoltenberg said, the incident reinforces the idea that the international community has entered a new, more dangerous stage of development and competition with authoritarian powers such as communist China. To that end, he called on members of NATO and like-minded nations to increase their investments in defense and security and to prepare for more such attempts to undermine the international order.
“In this more dangerous and more competitive world, we must continue to strengthen our deterrence and defense and further increase defense spending,” he said. “And that is what we are doing.”
The State Department didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.
