China's Spy Balloon Program Appears to Have Been Suspended, US Officials Say (cnn.com) 81
An anonymous reader shared this report from CNN:
China appears to have suspended its surveillance balloon program following a major diplomatic incident earlier this year, when one of the country's high-altitude spy balloons transited the United States, multiple sources familiar with US intelligence assessments told CNN. US officials believe that Chinese leaders have made a deliberate decision not to launch additional balloons since the one over the US was shot down by American fighter jets in February, the sources said. The US has not observed any new launches since the episode occurred... The US intelligence community believes that Chinese Communist Party leaders did not intend for the balloon to cross over the United States, and even reprimanded the operators of the surveillance program over the incident, one of the sources said...
The US assessed at the time that the spy balloon was part of an extensive surveillance program run by the Chinese military, CNN has previously reported. The balloon fleet had conducted at least two dozen missions over at least five continents in recent years, according to US officials. The suspension of the program is likely China's way of trying to stabilize its relations with the United States in the run-up to a potential meeting between President Biden and Xi in November at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco, said Christopher Johnson, a former senior China analyst at the CIA and now a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Although China is unlikely to publicly acknowledge that the balloon was part of an espionage program or announce it will no longer conduct such surveillance on the United States, Johnson said, quietly suspending the program is "a positive step" and likely Beijing's way of showing the US it is trying to address some of the friction points in the relationship...
The FBI concluded its analysis of the balloon's remnants earlier this year, and the Pentagon announced in June that the US government assessed that the balloon did not collect intelligence while flying over the country...In the wake of the incident, the US widened the aperture of its radar systems so that they could better detect objects traveling above a certain altitude and at certain speeds. The aim was to fix a "domain awareness gap" that had allowed three other suspected Chinese spy balloons to transit the continental United States undetected under the Trump administration, Gen. Glen VanHerck, commander of US Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command, said at the time. The more sensitive radar systems led the US military to spot more unidentified objects in US airspace, however, leading to three additional shootdowns of unidentified high-altitude objects in the weeks following the Chinese balloon incident.
The US assessed at the time that the spy balloon was part of an extensive surveillance program run by the Chinese military, CNN has previously reported. The balloon fleet had conducted at least two dozen missions over at least five continents in recent years, according to US officials. The suspension of the program is likely China's way of trying to stabilize its relations with the United States in the run-up to a potential meeting between President Biden and Xi in November at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco, said Christopher Johnson, a former senior China analyst at the CIA and now a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Although China is unlikely to publicly acknowledge that the balloon was part of an espionage program or announce it will no longer conduct such surveillance on the United States, Johnson said, quietly suspending the program is "a positive step" and likely Beijing's way of showing the US it is trying to address some of the friction points in the relationship...
The FBI concluded its analysis of the balloon's remnants earlier this year, and the Pentagon announced in June that the US government assessed that the balloon did not collect intelligence while flying over the country...In the wake of the incident, the US widened the aperture of its radar systems so that they could better detect objects traveling above a certain altitude and at certain speeds. The aim was to fix a "domain awareness gap" that had allowed three other suspected Chinese spy balloons to transit the continental United States undetected under the Trump administration, Gen. Glen VanHerck, commander of US Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command, said at the time. The more sensitive radar systems led the US military to spot more unidentified objects in US airspace, however, leading to three additional shootdowns of unidentified high-altitude objects in the weeks following the Chinese balloon incident.
Quick questions (Score:2)
1. It was purely accidental, but it happened three times before?
2. The other times were completely undetected, but they knew about it?
Re: (Score:2)
Shhh don't think too much, comrade. Just let the ruling party sort out the problem. If anything goes wrong just blame the other guys.
Re: (Score:1)
Happened at least three times and nobody in the Trump administration noticed. https://thehill.com/homenews/a... [thehill.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah the guys who sit on the White House roof with binoculars didn't see the balloons.
That's what you meant, right?
Or did you mean for unspecified technical reasons we were not able to detect them then but are now? Yet we know there were 3 balloons we couldn't detect because we couldn't detect them.
Did I get that right?
You don't see if you don't look [Re:Quick question (Score:2)
Or did you mean for unspecified technical reasons we were not able to detect them then but are now? Yet we know there were 3 balloons we couldn't detect because we couldn't detect them.
Did I get that right?
The "unspecified technical reason" was that the radar operators weren't looking for slow, high-altitude balloons.
Military radars were looking for threats, and balloons didn't match the profile of any of the threats they were looking for. Civilian radars were looking for stuff that might pose a hazard to air traffic, and there's no air traffic at that altitude. Nobody had been given the instructions "oh, by the way, keep an eye out for high altitude balloons."
Re: (Score:1)
Yes, agreed. Now then... how did we know there were 3 things years earlier that we couldn't detect at the time?
Did the Chinese later come tell us about it?
Makes no sense.
Re: You don't see if you don't look [Re:Quick ques (Score:1)
My guess: It is possible that raw sensor data is stored in a repository, and that the original algorithms for surfacing anomalies weren't tuned high altitude balloon. If the raw data is stored, it would just be a matter of running the appropriate algorithms to find balloon associated patterns in the raw data.
Re: You don't see if you don't look [Re:Quick que (Score:1)
Just to draw an analogy: imagine I have home surveillance cameras and find out someone has been sneaking into my house, but that the motion/face recognition system was being fooled by a funny outfit the intruder wears. Since the recordings still exist, I could just go check the older recordings - adjusting for the funny outfit - to find previously unnoticed intrusions.
Re: (Score:2)
So we keep years of 24x7, 365 day radar histories and when the current admin was caught by surprise, they told the Air Force to re-examine the 4 years of recordings during the trump admin to find other examples and make trump/republicans look bad?
Seriously?
Re: You don't see if you don't look [Re:Quick que (Score:1)
Microsoft has recently outed how Chinese propaganda campaigns operate in the US, and you sound a lot like either a propagandist or that you've been misled by one. It is entirely plausible that the military would store sensor data for the long term, and it's entirely plausible that analysts would double check that data when an illegal spying operation was spotted. That you'd act like this is surprising is damning.
Re: (Score:1)
I'm ok with the possibility that it went down just like that. Old data was re-analyzed. Maybe.
But I haven't seen anyone anywhere explain how they actually knew later about intrusions years earlier that went undetected at the time. This is just bad journalism and irritating. I don't get why journalists don't ask what should be the most basic obvious questions.
Re: (Score:1)
No, it was not explained, stalker NPC idiot. Why did you feel the need to post the same trash twice, with no link to back it up?
No one here said they 'know' it was by analyzing old data. They assumed and discussed it.
Post a link from an authoritative source.
Re: (Score:1)
Hours before you posted your trash, the rest of us discussed this like adults.
You whooshed the entire conversation. You're an idiot stalker NPC. Btw, why don't you post a link where they say they found the earlier balloons by analyzing old data? No one else claims to have seen that. Did you or are you just guessing? I'm going with guessing or you would have posted it.
Re: Quick questions (Score:2)
Linked article doesn't answer the question. Can you find a quote from any article anywhere that clarifies who knew, and when they found out?
Re: (Score:2)
Either
a). someone took a time machine into the past, went looking for balloons, and then traveled back into the future and warned the Biden administration (who then sat on the information, and said nothing until another balloon was detected during his administration)
or
b). someone in the three-letter agencies had the information all along and sat on it until Biden took office
or
c). actually there weren't any balloons over US territory until after Biden took office.
Take your pick.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
How many years of 24x7 raw radar data does the military hold on to? And why? Knowing a jet or ballon entered our air space three years ago on a certain vector, at a certain speed and altitude is useful how, exactly?
Re: Quick questions (Score:1)
Re:Quick questions (Score:4, Insightful)
1. It was purely accidental, but it happened three times before?
Claiming it was accidental is called "saving face". Yes, we'll all pretend that it was accidental, yup, yup.
2. The other times were completely undetected, but [we] knew about it?
Presumably the data was in the masses of recorded radar info but not teased out in analysis until after the incident showed the analysts what to look for in the archives. Now the signature will be automatically detected and reported as standard operating procedure, and the radar will be tuned up to avoid ignoring it as "clutter".
Re: (Score:2)
I feel like concluding that there were 3 Chinese spy balloons are a bit of a stretch. First, we don't know if the analysis is accurate and not going to generate false detections. Second, other objects or phenomena may also generate these signals. Third, even if they were balloons, they may not be Chinese spy balloons, since lots of people launch high altitude balloons. After they changed the radar, all the new things they detected and shot down turned out to be civilian balloons.
Re: (Score:2)
Third, even if they were balloons, they may not be Chinese spy balloons, since lots of people launch high altitude balloons.
The Chinese spy balloons were different from the small high altitude balloons that "lots of people" launch in that they were huge.
Large payload scientific and meteorological balloons are announced if they cross international borders.
After they changed the radar, all the new things they detected and shot down turned out to be civilian balloons.
There was a sudden panic when "OMG spy balloons are crossing our borders!" made headlines around the US, and they overreacted.
Re: (Score:2)
The National Weather Service and NOAA alone launch just over 100 balloons per day, at least two of the ones that the Administration ordered shot down were **our own** weather balloons (the other appears to have belonged to a hobbyist club in the Midwest).
Re: Quick questions (Score:2)
The incident happened this year, so it's reassuring that they were able to comb through 7 years of archived daily radar data from stations all across the western seaboard to find and confirm precisely three matches in a matter of days. Maybe they have an exceptionally powerful pattern matching AI trained for this already? Or maybe my layman's idea of radar data is wrong and there's no fuzziness or interpretation involved so they could just do a Ctrl+F? Of course that raises other questions, like why are rad
Re: (Score:2)
Presumably the data was in the masses of recorded radar info but not teased out in analysis until after the incident showed the analysts what to look for in the archives. Now the signature will be automatically detected and reported as standard operating procedure, and the radar will be tuned up to avoid ignoring it as "clutter".
They were probably being intentionally vague when they announced they'd discovered evidence of those previous balloon flights [militarytimes.com]. I do recall at least one other report from back then which stated it involved analysis of previously-collected data.
Re: (Score:2)
Of course it was accidental, have you ever heard of a mechanism for steering a weather balloon? We're supposed to be very, very frightened now that the Chinese know that we have weather . . .
Re: (Score:3)
The balloons were reportedly changing altitude to catch different winds, and were loitering over sensitive areas for extended periods. Definitely not an accident, but pretending it was might be diplomatically better for some reason.
As for 'undetected', that could be either 'we knew about it but decided it was not important until it went public and embarrassed us politically' or 'undetected at the time because we were not looking for it, but review of past data revealed previous incursions'.
Re: Quick questions (Score:2)
It's strange that we're willing to call out other things -- Uyghurs, incursions around Taiwan, TikTok, tech espionage, etc., but if we were to challenge the claim that it was an accident, suddenly it becomes an obstacle to diplomacy.
Re: (Score:2)
People are dumb, and they run countries. Accusations that affect egos are worse than those that don't.
That's my take anyway. There's probably a reason that the UN hasn't called upon me to negotiate things for them.
Re: (Score:2)
But think about it.
Accusations of tech espionage: "Meh"
Accusations of aerial espionage: "Stop saying that or we'll make our next diplomatic meeting difficult"
Really?
Re: (Score:2)
Politicians seem to think a cyber attack is simultaneously offensive and acceptable. Physical violation of territory is another thing altogether.
Re: (Score:2)
> until it went public and embarrassed us politically' or 'undetected at the time because we
> were not looking for it, but review of past data revealed previous incursions'.
The relevant agencies of the US government knew about it (because of course they did; it was operating in NORAD air space for crying out loud, and it had the radar cross section of a bus), but the CCP somehow (despite all common sense)
Re: (Score:2)
3. Suspended from what? They're balloons.
Re: Quick questions (Score:2)
Also it was a spy balloon that didn't collect any intelligence while flying over the country...
Re: (Score:2)
Also it was a spy balloon that didn't collect any intelligence while flying over the country...
Says who? The spy agencies that were unaware of the school bus-sized balloon until people spotted it in the air over military bases?
Yeah, I trust them...
Re: (Score:1)
Suspended at least long enough ... (Score:3)
... to modify the remote communication linkage so the command-and-control and the reporting backhaul channels will at least be on different frequences and use different encryption (and perhaps modulation) schemes than the one that was captured and analyzed.
Maybe, as a mater of policy or expedience, they are quitting, or at least quitting long enough to get past the current diplomatic situation. But for sure, as a matter of operational security, they're quitting long enough to rehack the phone-home comm to be harder to monitor, take over, or preferably even detect, now that its predecessor has been shot down, captured, and presumably reverse-engineered.
Re:Suspended at least long enough ... (Score:5, Funny)
But for sure, as a matter of operational security, they're quitting long enough to rehack the phone-home comm to be harder to monitor, take over, or preferably even detect, now that its predecessor has been shot down, captured, and presumably reverse-engineered.
So you're saying its future is still up in the air?
Re: (Score:2)
Has the US military released any details of what was on that alleged spy balloon? If it really was full of spy gear and not weather monitoring equipment, you'd expect them to have to released photos to the press to prove their accusation.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Blinken most likely cancelled his visit because he had just been disparaged, insulted, and ignored at previous stops on his 'world tour', and the balloon gave him the excuse to skip another diplomatic fiasco. I have to say, I never expected Biden's diplomatic efforts to be almost as unsuccessful as his predecessors'.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, but there might be advantages to keeping it secret as well - knowing what the equipment is capable of it might be better letting the Chinese think the equipment got destroyed.
In the meantime, the intelligence community is simply dumping the chips to try to get at any secret keys. Maybe they've learned what it could do and how it could report back up and other things that you don't want the Chinese to know you could do.
After all, part of the problem after the Bombes were built to decrypt ENIGMA was not
Re: (Score:2)
I doubt that if it was spying it would contain anything useful. It's a balloon, they crash and are easy to shoot down.
It would be designed to hold everything in RAM only, and wipe it the moment a fall sensor went off if it was still powered.
And there would be no reason for the US not to show off the cameras and antennas they found.
Re: (Score:2)
No, you wouldn't. That would mean they let their guard down, failed us, and let in traverse the entire country before stopping it - instead they declared it a harmless weather balloon, then shot down three of our own ballons to demonstrate their competence.
Re: (Score:2)
Didn't try to spy or wasn't successful? (Score:2)
Wasn't successful (Score:5, Interesting)
It isn't clear from what I've read, when they say it didn't collect intelligence, that it wasn't trying to, or that it was trying but wasn't successful because the US knew where it was and wasn't doing anything interesting when it was around. Either way I don't really trust that we're getting the whole story.
According to military intelligence the balloon wasn't going to get anything that a spy satellite couldn't get, and our US bases have policies and procedures about spy satellites. Basically, cover up all the secrets and move the cutting-edge spy planes into hangars until the satellite/balloon finishes passing over.
According to Peter Zeihan, the US had a helicopter hovering below the balloon and a jet keeping watch overhead, so that the balloon didn't really see anything anyway.
Peter also states that the monitoring helicopter (and various other systems) got a treasure trove of sigint information from doing this - all sorts of information about frequencies used, encryption keys used, capabilities, and so on. To hear him tell it, the US got way more useful information from the balloon than China did.
Re: Wasn't successful (Score:2)
>Zeihan says the US had a helicopter hovering below the balloon
Assuming that even the spinning blades can obscure cameras and it can't be compensated for, AND it was some special high altitude helicopter that can go maybe half as high as a fixed wing interceptor, this would still be a 30ft circle thousands of feet away from the camera aperture. It would be like someone holding the head of a pin a few feet in front of you trying to block your view.
Re: Wasn't successful (Score:2)
I guess maybe they had lasers/LEDs pointing up at the cameras? Still, that's some precision positioning
Re: (Score:2)
They successfully blinded spy satellites with ground-based lasers back in the '70s, it's not high tech any longer.
Re: Wasn't successful (Score:2)
If they can do it from the ground, what was the helicopter doing?
Re: (Score:2)
Wasting tax dollars?
Re: (Score:2)
According to Peter Zeihan, the US had a helicopter hovering below the balloon and a jet keeping watch overhead, so that the balloon didn't really see anything anyway.
I don't understand the connection between helo and "balloon didn't really see anything". The balloon was hovering at something like 60000 ft.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The balloon fleet had conducted at least two dozen missions over at least five continents in recent years, according to US officials.
How dare some other country do something like this, that's the US's sole domain since they started doing it sixty years ago. What's the world coming to when any Johnny-come-lately (or perhaps YuÄ"hÃn-come-lately) can get in on the act alongside the US?
Re: (Score:2)
that's the US's sole domain since they started doing it sixty years ago.
Are you of the opinion that only the US has spy satellites?
The US has satellites and spy planes, each gathering different types of information, since China lacks spy planes (they have spy satellites) they deployed some spy balloons to gather the types of intel we collect with spy planes...
Re: (Score:1)
The balloon's last intercepted transmission: (Score:2)
æ'æé£Zäçsäçåå
çoe -
Re: The balloon's last intercepted transmission: (Score:2)
WTF, /., you can't handle unicode Hanzi? You fucked up my Firefly joke?
Ugh.
"WÇ' shà fÄ"ng zhÅng de yÄpiÃn yÃzi, kÃn -"
(I am a lead upon the wind, look -"
Re: (Score:2)
Lead? Maybe a lead leaf?
Re: (Score:3)
Covfefe
Re: (Score:3)
"Be sure to drink your Ovaltine".
Of course.. (Score:1)
It was always suspended, now it's postponed (Score:2)
You know, suspended in mid-air.
It served its purpose (Score:2)
Note that the Trojan Horse, as great a trap as it was, also only worked a single time. Same for the 9/11 attacks, that kind of attack will never succeed again.
But it needn't. It did what it should do. It made the US waste billions on a defense system that will not serve any purpose ever again. Mission accomplished.
Re: (Score:2)
that kind of attack will never succeed again.
Why on Earth not? Do all skyscrapers now mount AA batteries? Is there some mysterious reason why only passenger planes would work? Has Fatherland Security suddenly become competent at keeping weapons off planes? (Hint: I've repeatedly carried knives and tools on board by accident because I've forgotten they were in my laptop bag.)
Interestingly a couple of mothballed Boeing aircraft (old 737s, IIRC) which had been converted to tankers were stolen in Africa. T
Re: (Score:2)
First, no pilot will ever open the cockpit doors again, no matter the threat. Second, any plane that does not respond, twice so if that plane is not supposed to fly in the airspace in the first place, will be shot down, especially if not a passenger plane, so your tanker plan will fizzle before it comes even close to a target.
How do you plan to repeat that stunt without access to a cockpit to hijack a plane and without a chance to get any plane that shouldn't be near your target there?
Re: (Score:2)
Why hijack a plane when you can use your own? Monsack Fonseca alone created over 200,000 shell companies to hide ownership of assets around the world, and they were only one of dozens of legal firms in that business. Mothballed planes are cheap (and as I noted above) some have been stolen outright.
Are you under the delusion that the US has armed fighter planes patrolling above every major target in the country 24x7? Be real. Even if a plane is sitting fueled at the end of the runway it still takes at le
Re: (Score:2)
What the US has instead is a nearly perfect surveillance system that covers pretty much all of its airspace. If you as much as start a plane without proper clearance, you'll notice that there are actually indeed a couple military planes on standby for exactly this purpose.
Re: (Score:2)
a nearly perfect surveillance system
I'm sorry, but, a *what*? A) There's no such thing, and B) Even if such a phantasmagorical system existed the US military is utterly incompetent to manage such a thing.
Know how much of a diversion from a declared flight plan is required of a jet due into O'Hare in order to take out the Sears Tower? Less than seven minutes even if they didn't accelerate from their landing speed. Your magic jet sitting at the end of the runway at O'Hare wouldn't even have had time to get
Re: (Score:2)
It did what it should do. It made the US waste billions on a defense system that will not serve any purpose ever again. Mission accomplished.
Really? Where have invested "billions" in response to China's spy balloon program?
The only fiscal waste I saw were the obscenely expensive misses they used to "bring it down"...
And in other news ... (Score:2)