Chinese Spy Balloon Did Not Collect Data While Transiting US: Pentagon

Pentagon spokesman Air Force Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder speaks at a briefing at the Pentagon in Arlington, Va., on March 16, 2023. Win McNamee/Getty Images

The Chinese spy balloon that flew over sensitive U.S. military sites earlier this year did not collect or transmit any information before it was shot down off the Carolina coast, the Pentagon told reporters on June 29.

The balloon, which flew from Alaska to the East Coast, came equipped with commercially available U.S.-made gear that allowed it to take photos and videos and gather other information, according to media reports on Thursday citing preliminary findings from a government-led investigation.

The gear was mixed with some more specialized Chinese sensors and other equipment in what officials saw as an inventive surveillance attempt by Beijing, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported on the issue.

Pentagon spokesperson Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder on Thursday wouldn’t confirm whether U.S. components were on the balloon, but said the department was aware of previous cases where foreign militaries have used off-the-shelf U.S. equipment such as drones.

“So, that in of itself is not surprising,” he said at a press briefing.

Although the balloon had “intelligence collection capabilities,” Ryder said the Pentagon determined that “it did not collect while it was transiting the United States or overflying the United States.”

Defense officials have previously said they took measures to limit the balloon’s capacity to gather sensitive information, and “certainly the efforts that we made contributed,” said Ryder.

A U.S. Air Force U-2 pilot looks down at the suspected Chinese surveillance balloon as it hovers over the central continental United States on Feb. 3, 2023 before later being shot down by the Air Force off the coast of South Carolina, in this photo released by the U.S. Air Force through the Defense Department on Feb. 22, 2023. U.S. Air Force/Department of Defense/Handout via Reuters

The balloon’s incursion led to further strain in the already tense U.S.-China relationship, causing Secretary of State Antony Blinken to postpone a scheduled meeting to Beijing, which he completed recently. Following the downing of the balloon, Beijing rebuffed a call from Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and has refused several U.S. requests for military-to-military communication.

The State Department on Thursday also refused to comment on the Chinese spy balloon, but said that the forced technology transfer was one topic brought up in Blinken’s recent trip to China.

The secretary made clear to Beijing that “we are not going to allow you to take U.S. technology and use it against us; and if you were in our shoes, you would do the same thing,” department spokesperson Matt Miller said at a briefing.

As to whether the United States will make public its findings on the spy balloon, Miller said it’s up to the FBI to decide.

The U.S. administration has assessed the balloon as a part of a vast Chinese surveillance program that targets over 40 countries. Officials have described it to be as big as about three buses. It had antennas capable of intercepting communications and solar panels that can enable it to “operate multiple active intelligence collection censors,” the State Department previously told The Epoch Times.

David Stilwell, who served as the assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs under the Trump administration, said that reports of U.S. components being used on the balloon to spy on the country should help Americans “understand the real intent of the CCP [Chinese Communist Party].”

“I hope we'll use this to get American companies to think twice about exporting sensitive, or any technology to the PRC,” he told NTD, a sister outlet of The Epoch Times, using the acronym for the regime’s official name, the People’s Republic of China. By making “conscious decisions not to make these trades” with China, they can avoid being complicit in Chinese espionage efforts and keep sensitive technologies “out of Chinese hands.”

He believes that “the downside of doing business with the PRC, especially on the high-tech side, is beginning to show itself.”

On Tuesday, 10 lawmakers wrote to Blinken urging the United States not to renew a decades-old deal facilitating bilateral science and technology cooperation. They argued that the partnership organized under the deal could help China develop technologies that can later be used against the United States.

Stilwell believes the lawmakers were “on the right track.”

“We’re to the point now where we realize the PRC has gotten 100 percent adversarial on us,” he said. “Anything we share with them, what could eventually be used against us, as we just saw with the balloon.”