The Chinese Spy Balloon Incident Will ‘Shape’ the Coming Defense Budget: Sen. Tim Kaine

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) speaks during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on Sept. 24, 2020. Susan Walsh/Pool/Getty Images

U.S. Senator Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who is a member of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees, said the recent Chinese spy balloon incident is going to “shape” this year’s defense budget.

During a Feb. 11 interview with Fox News, Kaine said the senate committees will make the defense investments they need to keep the United States secure.

“You can be sure that both in the Foreign Relations and the Armed Services Committee, as we shape the Defense Bill throughout the spring, incidents like this are going to get a lot of attention and especially, to make sure we’re making the investments we need to keep everyone safe,” said Kaine.

The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is a series of federal laws specifying the annual budget and expenditures of the U.S. Department of Defense. The two committees Kaine sits on play an important role in deciding what is funded in the package.

The two-term senator also said he is “disturbed” by the lack of communication between the United States and China after the initial Feb. 4 spy balloon incident. Kaine wants to see the communication between “the two most powerful nations in the world” open up and improve to avoid any escalation after the spy balloon was shot down over the U.S. waters

“One of the most disturbing pieces of news I heard this week was when General Austin tried to call his Chinese counterpart about the balloon incident, but they didn’t pick up the phone,” said Kaine. “We have to figure out a way to make sure that as challenging as the relationship is, that the communication is thorough and robust so that we don’t accidentally have a miscalculation.”

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden told PBS NewsHour on Feb. 8 that he has ongoing communication with Xi Jinping but had not spoken to him about the spy balloon. He also said that “a balloon gathering information over America” was not a breach in security and indicated that it would not make relations worse between the United States and China.

A second senator from Virginia, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), told a local news station that the balloon incident could affect the two countries’ relations and he is focused on preventing Chinese tech and telecommunication companies from breaching U.S. security.

“It [the spy balloon incident] does beg the bigger question, which is United States-China relations,” said Warner.

FBI special agents assigned to the evidence response team process material recovered from the Chinese spy balloon recovered off the coast of South Carolina, at the FBI laboratory in Quantico, Va., on Feb. 9, 2023. FBI via AP

“I hope to be laying out, literally in the coming days, a more holistic approach on how we take on the question of foreign technology platforms and their potential threat to American national security,” added Warner, announcing that he has legislation coming out soon to address this issue.

Kaine also sees China as an adversary and said he wants the United States to be “creative” when dealing with the communist regime. However, he thinks the spy balloon incident makes the Chinese military look incompetent because the incident was so close to the scheduled talks with U.S. Sec. of State Antony Blinken.

Blinken’s earlier plans to meet with Xi Jinping were canceled after the spy balloon incident.

“To have this happen right before that dialogue demonstrated some significant, I think, incompetence and maybe kind of a left-hand, right-hand problem where some elements of the Chinese military might be doing some things that the Chinese government is unaware of,” said Kaine.

Reuters reported that a U.S. official told the news agency, “on condition of anonymity that a meeting between Blinken and Wang was possible at the Munich conference, which runs from Feb. 17-19. A second source also said it was possible but that nothing had been confirmed.”