The penetration of U.S. airspace by a Chinese spy balloon last week was a significant violation of American sovereignty and part of a larger intelligence collection campaign, according to two retired military leaders.
Retired Navy Adm. Michael Rogers, who previously served as the commander of U.S. Cyber Command and as director of the National Security Agency, said the spy balloon’s incursion into U.S. airspace signified a serious threat to the United States.
“The penetration of a nation’s sovereign territory for any reason is a significant concern,” Rogers said during a Feb. 10 discussion of the incident with the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA). “The penetration for the purposes of espionage is doubly concerning.
“We should never allow a foreign entity to penetrate our sovereign territory that has not been coordinated or agreed on in advance.”
Rogers said that the incident and subsequent revelation that China’s communist regime is conducting a global spy balloon program suggested that it was engaged in a “sustained level of activities” designed to “penetrate U.S. airspace to conduct intelligence collection activities.”
To that end, Rogers said the United States would need to collect as much debris from the balloon as possible in order to get a better assessment of what exactly the balloon’s capabilities were and, in doing so, better understand what intelligence it was designed to collect.
Similarly, he’s concerned that the apparent lack of awareness of previous balloon incursions meant that the Chinese had either expected the United States not to discover the balloon or else believed the nation simply would not publicly respond to it.
“Whoever directed or authorized this mission … had high confidence that it was going to be successful,” Rogers said.
‘The Threat has Changed’
Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Joseph Guastella, who also spoke at the JINSA event, condemned the incursion as “an absolute violation of our sovereignty” and said that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) conducted the mission “because they can.”Guastella and Rogers agreed that the CCP would have immediately shot down a U.S. airship had “the shoe been on the other foot.”
Guastella also noted that there was precedent for such actions, saying the “norm has been there for years” and citing the 1960 example of the U-2 Incident, in which the Soviet Union shot down a U.S. spy plane resulting in a dramatic political fallout.
He said the plot further solidified the CCP’s “opportunistic” and “nefarious” campaigns to steal technologies and otherwise undermine the United States.
“This thing would have been shot down relatively quickly had the shoe been on the other foot,” Rogers agreed.
On the issue of the United States’ response, both Guastella and Rogers believed that the United States should make a more overt stand on the issue of territorial integrity, but also agreed that the U.S. military handled the situation well, given its novelty.
“This is a niche area that warfare is evolving to … it’s a near-space region that frankly we had just not been focusing on,” Guastella said, describing the incident as “new territory.”
“I think they did an excellent job at organizing the takedown of it.”
From here, Guastella said, a key concern would be ensuring that U.S. political leadership did not deter itself from taking the actions necessary to defend American sovereignty. If the balloon had harmful chemicals or other equipment on board, he said, the United States would have needed to take it down.
“When you’re dealing with a bully, which is what China is, you must respond with strength,” Guastella said.
“What we don’t want to do is deter ourselves.”
In all, Guastella said that the United States would need to continue to invest in and build up its capacity for conflict between great powers. After more than 20 years of primarily combating terrorism, he said, the United States would need to pivot more quickly and comprehensively to contend with the threat of adversarial nations like China, Russia, and North Korea.
“We’re dealing with a country, not a terrorist organization,” Guastella said.
“The threat has changed. ... These are countries with resources, and they are determined to undermine us.”
