The Cost of Chaos: The CNN State of the Art and a Memory from Tom Bergen’s Air Force Effort in 1954

Editor’s Note: Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. Bergen wrote “The Cost of Chaos: The Trump Administration and the World.” His views are not shared in this commentary. View more opinion on CNN.

And it reminded me that when my father, Tom Bergen, was a lieutenant in the US Air Force in the mid-1950s, he worked on a program to help send balloons into Soviet airspace.

In 1954 he was assigned to Headquarters Air Material Command at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio. He worked on a project called the “Grand Union”, which was used to release balloons that took photos over the Soviet Union. Turkey launched the spy balloons.

My dad didn’t mention this part of his career very much because the work was secret, but the program has been declassified ever since.

Detection of Unidentified Blow-Up Objects with the Maxar Technologies Spy Satellites: The Pentagon’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office

The US’ ability to track the balloons’ whereabouts has also added to the broader understanding of how large China’s balloon surveillance program actually is.

The US and its competitors have spy satellites that can take photos. They have the capacity to do full-motion video. They can take thermal imagery that detects individuals moving around at night! They can use a resolution of centimeters when the skies are clear.

Commercial Satellite imagery is getting cheap so you can buy your own close-up images of the Russian battle group in Ukraine. Just ask Maxar Technologies; they have built up a rather profitable business on this model, which was just acquired two months ago for $6 billion by a private equity firm.

Beijing’s rhetoric hardened significantly after the US military shot down the balloon, with China’s Foreign Ministry accusing the US of “overreacting” and “seriously violating international practice.” The Defense Ministry warned China it has the right to use necessary means to deal with similar situations.

But it may help explain, at least in part, an element of a little-noticed report published by the US Office of Director of National Intelligence last month.

Over the past two decades, US Navy and US Air Force personnel and pilots have reported at least 500 reports of unidentified objects in the sky. The Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office tries to investigate unexplained disappearances and is a fancy name for this office.

F-35 flight tracking and the location of the Chinese president’s manned aerial intelligence mission over the U.S.: A case study

But China has arguably done much worse. US officials have accused it of benefiting from the work of hackers who stole design data about the F-35 fighter aircraft as China builds its own new generation of fighters – and of sucking up much of the personal information of more than 20 million Americans who were current or former members of the US government when they reportedly got inside the computers of the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) in 2015. China called the F-35 theft report “baseless” and denied responsibility for the OPM hacking.

Whether the balloon was a military or a civilian aircraft, the location over the US raises the question of just how close the Chinese president is to potentially sensitive missions being undertaken under his watch.

Roughly half a dozen of those flights have been within US airspace – although not necessarily over US territory, according to one official familiar with the intelligence.

And not all of the balloons sighted around the globe have been exactly the same model as the one shot down off the coast of South Carolina on Saturday, that official and another source familiar with the intelligence said. There are a lot ofvariations, these people said.

The Washington Post reported that a link to the broader program was found before the last balloon was spotted.

The source said the intelligence community will be interested in learning whether the equipment on the Chinese balloon has any resemblance to technology constructed by the US intelligence community and military as the Chinese government has long been aggressive in stealing American defense secrets.

The tracking method gave US officials an important tool as they monitored the latest balloon as it went through the country, gathering intelligence before it was shot down off the coast of South Carolina.

The biggest unanswered question, officials say, remains China’s intent. China continues to argue that the vessel was a weather balloon that drifted off-course and that its path over the United States was an accident. This type of balloon mainly rode the jet stream, because it has only limited steering capabilities.

Some observers of elite Chinese politics still don’t believe that the president would have known a balloon would be dispatched to US airspace or that lower-level officials would be involved in such a mission.

The team is made up of agents, analysts, engineers, and scientists, who are responsible for both creating and analyzing measures to keep an eye on the US.

OTE personnel, for example, are responsible for building and maintaining the surveillance devices used by FBI and intelligence community personnel targeting national security threats but also work to defeat attempts by foreign intelligence agencies to penetrate the US.

There are multiple reasons why we wouldn’t do that, according to a member of the House Intelligence Committee. We want to collect off it, you want to see where it’s going and what it’s doing.

A defense official said that the US has procedures in order to protect sensitive locations from being used for overhead overflight.

The recovery of the suspected Chinese spy balloon from an airstrike by US fighter jets over the Atlantic Ocean on Saturday (Monday)

The US Navy released photos Tuesday of its recovery effort of a suspected Chinese spy balloon, which US fighter jets shot down over the Atlantic Ocean on Saturday.

On Monday, Gen. Glen VanHerck, commander of US Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), told reporters that the balloon was roughly 200 feet tall and carried a payload weighing more than a couple of thousand pounds.

The officials told lawmakers one of the reasons the balloon was not first shot down when it entered Alaskan airspace is that the waters there are cold and deep, making it less likely they could have recovered the balloon, according to the sources.

“[F]rom a safety standpoint, picture yourself with large debris weighing hundreds if not thousands of pounds falling out of the sky. VanHerck mentioned that they are talking about that. “So glass off of solar panels, potentially hazardous material, such as material that is required for a batteries to operate in such an environment as this and even the potential for explosives to detonate and destroy the balloon that could have been present.”

“[T]his gave us the opportunity to assess what they were actually doing, what kind of capabilities existed on the balloon, what kind of transmission capabilities existed, and I think you’ll see in the future that that time frame was well worth its value to collect over,” VanHerck said.

According to the Chinese Defense Ministry, the US used force to attack our civilian lyft, which is an overreaction.

China reacted angrily to the balloon shootdown, refusing a call with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and canceling a trip to Beijing by the Secretary of State. New sanctions in response to the balloon would likely further inflame tensions.

China admitted ownership of the balloon on Monday, saying it was used for flight tests and had “seriously deviated” from its flight course “by mistake.”

Mao attributed China’s good behavior to the country being a responsible one. “We have always strictly abided by international law. We have informed all relevant parties and appropriately handled the situation, which did not pose any threats to any countries.”

Air-Drift Balloons Over China: The Case of a 100 Meter-long Cloud Chaser, the China Aerospace Studies Institute

Chinese leader Xi Jinping has urged the PLA Air Force to “speed up air and space integration and sharpen their offensive and defensive capabilities” as early as 2014, and military experts have designated “near space” as a crucial link in the integration.

Near space is a place where hypersonic transit weapons and ballistic missiles cross the flightpaths of most commercial and military jets and satellites.

This isn’t simply a China thing. The US, and other nations as well, have been working on and developing high-altitude aerostats, balloons and similar vehicles,” said Brendan Mulvaney, director of the China Aerospace Studies Institute (CASI), a research center serving the US Air Force.

With the rapid development of modern technology, the space for information confrontation is no longer limited to land, sea, and the low altitude. Near space has also become a new battlefield in modern warfare and an important part of the national security system,” read a 2018 article in the PLA Daily, the official newspaper of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

When it comes to flying, high-flying balloons can hang around for a long time and are not easily detected by radar, according to Shi Hong, the executive editor of Shipborne Weapons.

The cheap and long-term stare they give for collection of imagery, communications and other information is what Mulvaney believes makes them ideal for China.

An example of advancement China has made in this domain is the reported flight of a 100 meter- long (328 Feet) shirless dirigible-like aircraft known as the “Cloud Chaser.” A professor at a university stated in an interview with a newspaper that his vehicle traveled across Asia, Africa and North America in an around-the-world flight.

The US has also been bolstering its capacity to use lighter-than-air vehicles. A statement from the American firm that was contracted by the Defence Department to work on using their balloons to develop a more complete picture of what is happening on the battlefield states that they were required to use the balloons as a means to apply effects to the battlefield.

A paper published last April by researchers in the PLA institute notes that air-drift balloons were spotted over China in 1997 and 2017, but the documentary didn’t provide further details.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/09/china/china-balloon-near-space-development-intl-hnk/index.html

The Schuster Analyse of the CASI Hypersonic Balloon vs. Taiwan-Japanese Inequality

“Understanding the atmospheric conditions up there is critical to programming the guidance software” for ballistic and hypersonic missiles, according to Hawaii-based analyst Carl Schuster, a former director of operations at the US Pacific Command’s Joint Intelligence Center.

Both the self-governing island of Taiwan and Japan have acknowledged past, similar sightings, though it is not clear if they are related to the US incident.

CASI’s Mulvaney said that whether the balloon itself is characterized as “dual use” or “state-owned,” data collected would have gone back to China, which is now receiving another kind of information from the incident.

“At the end of the day responses and (tactics, techniques, and procedures) from the US and other countries on how they react, or fail to – all of that has value to China and the PLA.”

The balloon was shot down near the Atlantic coast after being briefed by officials from the Pentagon, State Department and intelligence community.

An official says that the Biden administration has found that the Chinese balloon is capable of monitoring US communications.

Sources familiar with the congressional briefings said Thursday that the balloon order was dispatched without the knowledge of the Chinese President.

One official said the only evidence that has been delivered to FBI analysts is on the surface of the ocean, which includesopy itself, wiring and a small amount of electronics. The official said analysts have not yet seen the “payload,” which is where you would expect to see the “lion’s share” of electronics.

The commander of the US Northern Command and NORAD said on Monday that they did not assess that it presented a collection hazard beyond what already exists in Chinese technical means.

The officials told lawmakers the US had to protect its intel from China since the Chinese seemed to stop giving it information after the US learned of the balloon.

Reply to the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee on ‘Spy Balloons and the Implications for the Security of the United States’

The sources said that several Republicans railing against the administration, including one who doesn’t like the president, made the House briefing tense.

I believe that the Pentagon told us that they were able to reduce in real-time the risks of the situation.

The administration, the president, our military and intelligence agencies acted with care, according to me. Their capabilities are incredible. Was everything done 100% correctly? I can’t imagine that would be the case of almost anything we do. Romney said Thursday that he came away more confident.

The military’s assessment of the Chinese surveillance was challenged at an Appropriations Committee hearing on Thursday, with a Democrat telling officials that they didn’t know how to say it wasn’t a military threat.

“You guys have to help me understand why this baby wasn’t taken out long before and because I am telling you that that this ain’t the last time. We’ve [seen] brief incursions, now we’ve seen a long incursion, what happens next?,” said Tester, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee.

“We don’t understand because quite frankly, we have been briefed in his committee over and over and over again, about the risks that China poses, both economically and militarily,” he said. “China tends to push the envelope all the time until a line is set down.”“

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/09/politics/spy-balloon-technology/index.html

The Air Space Mission Over Alaska: The Role of China in the State-Dependent Intelligence and Combined Military-Industry Complexes

The balloon that gathered intelligence over Alaska wasn’t near sensitive sites, according to Pentagon officials at the hearing.

Some parts of the balloon recovered on the ocean have been delivered, but other parts are complicated by bad weather.

The officials said it was not yet clear where the parts for the balloon were made. The officials said that there hasn’t been a determination of what the device was capable of doing and its specific intent, because analysts have not looked at the entire equipment on the balloon.

Of the small portion they have examined, analysts have not identified any sort of explosive or “offensive material” that would pose a danger to the American public.

There was English writing on parts of the balloon that were found, one of the sources familiar with the congressional briefings said, though they were not high-tech components. The source wouldn’t provide information on what part of the balloon was written in English.

The official said that they had no explanation for the violation of the airspace of Central and South America by the second balloon. The program will only be exposed, making it hard for the PRC to use it.

Senior Trump administration officials including former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, former Secretary of State and CIA Director Mike Pompeo, as well as ex- national security adviser John Bolton have all said they were not notified that Chinese balloons entered US airspace under the last administration.

According to CNN, there was an assessment made to American lawmakers on Thursday that could point to a lack of coordination within the Chinese system at a fraught period of US-China relations.

It was possible that the repercussions of the mission would not be seen as serious enough by the leaders of the country to warrant a visit by the most senior US diplomat in over a year.

Beijing, in a statement last weekend, appeared to link the device to “companies,” rather than the government or military – though in China the prominence of state-owned enterprises and a robust military-industrial complex blurs the line between the two.

“The problem with the centralization of power under Xi Jinping is the lack of delegation of authority to lower levels,” said Thompson, who is a senior research fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore (NUS).

That means that lower-level officials who may have the capacity to more closely monitor such missions may not be empowered to do so, or not be equipped to make political judgments about their impact, he said. There could be power struggles between lower and higher ranking officials.

“There is a tension throughout the Chinese system – it’s a feature of Chinese governance, where lower levels fight for their own autonomy, and upper levels fight for greater control,” he said.

Past crises in China have pointed to these tensions, including the outbreaks of both SARS in 2002-2003 and more recently Covid-19, where reporting delays were widely seen as having slowed the response and compounded the problem. The officials were blamed for being accustomed to a system where info flowed from the top down, not the bottom up.

According to a political scientist at the University of Chicago, balloon launches could fall into a gap in which operations were not managed or overseen in the same way as other aircraft missions.

In this case, entities launching balloons may have received little or no resistance from other countries, and perhaps the United States, as well as being seen on a routine basis, at modest costs.

“As a result, while the leaders of these programs have also become emboldened over time to test new routes, it was likely that they didn’t get top priority attention from the perspective of political risk,” he said.

China’s Foreign Ministry and the U.S. Foreign Ministry in the Light of the Xi-Zhao Investigations into a Surveillance Balloon

China’s Foreign Ministry appeared caught off-guard by the situation as it publicly unfolded over the past week – releasing its first explanation of the incident more than 12 hours after the Pentagon announced it was tracking a suspected surveillance balloon.

“Because of his personality, he wants 100% (control),” said Alfred Wu, an associate professor, also at the NUS Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. I don’t think it’s possible for him to give that kind of autonomy.

Instead, Xi may have been comfortable with an incident that diverted the attention of a public frustrated amid a faltering economy after years under the recently dismantled zero-Covid policy – but underestimated the US domestic response that resulted in the postponed talks, Wu said.

Washington may be trying to get Beijing to continue its dialogue with it as it seeks to “continue the dialogue” which started during the meeting between the Chinese leader and US President Joe Biden.

The Chinese companies that the US Commerce Department is blocking from obtaining American technology are tied to the Chinese army.

The six companies are: Beijing Nanjiang Aerospace Technology; China Electronics Technology Group Corporation 48th Research Institute; Dongguan Lingkong Remote Sensing Technology; Eagles Men Aviation Science and Technology Group; Guangzhou Tian-Hai-Xiang Aviation Technology; and Shanxi Eagles Men Aviation Science and Technology Group.

The Entity List is a powerful tool for identifying actors that seek to use their access to global markets to do harm and threaten American national security.