U.S. : Chinese military behind aerial spy program

>> China’s military is likely behind a bold aerial spy program that has targeted more than 40 countries on five continents with high-altitude surveillance balloons similar to one the U.S. shot down over the Atlantic Ocean coast last weekend, the Biden administration said Thursday.

The statement from a senior State Department official offered the most detail to date linking China’s People’s Liberation Army to the balloon that traversed the United States, with the administration asserting that China has developed a vast surveillance program capable of collecting sensitive intelligence.

The public details are meant to refute China’s persistent denials that the balloon was used for spying, including a claim Thursday that U.S. accusations about the balloon amount to “information warfare” against Beijing.

The Pentagon on Wednesday said the balloon was part of a program involving a number of such airships that China has been operating for “several years.”

At Thursday’s daily briefing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning repeated China’s insistence that the large unmanned balloon was a civilian meteorological airship that had accidentally blown off course and that the U.S. had “overreacted” by shooting it down.

“It is irresponsible,” Mao said at a daily briefing. The latest accusations “may be part of the U.S. side’s information warfare against China.”

Silence

China’s defense minister refused to take a phone call from Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to discuss the balloon issue on Saturday, the Pentagon said, and China has not answered questions as to what government department or company the balloon belonged to, or how it planned to follow up on a pledge to take further action over the matter.

U.S. officials have dismissed China’s claims, and agents from the FBI and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service are cataloguing debris recovered from the ocean and transporting it for further processing.