A ballooning interest in China's spy program
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 8 February 2023
⏱️ 21 minutes
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Summary
Today on Post Reports, we talk to national security reporter Shane Harris about exclusive reporting from The Washington Post on the vast aerial surveillance program behind the Chinese spy balloon.
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The U.S. intelligence community has linked the Chinese spy balloon shot down on Saturday to a vast surveillance program, and U.S. officials have begun to brief allies and partners who have been similarly targeted.
Why balloons? The technology is old but effective, according to Shane’s sources.
“The real advantage that the balloon has is that it actually moves very slowly,” Shane said. “That balloon could hover over a target at an altitude of about 60,000 to 80,000 feet, where it might be very hard to see. And it can stay there potentially for hours.”
The United States hasn’t been great at detecting the balloons before now. In some cases, the balloons had been characterized as UFOs.
Shane breaks down what this renewed concern about Chinese surveillance means for U.S.-China relations going forward — and why so many countries spy on each other.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Shane, you and your colleagues have been reporting on what the U.S. government has determined |
| 0:08.4 | about this Chinese air balloon that was shot down over the weekend. |
| 0:13.6 | What did you learn? |
| 0:14.6 | Well, what we discovered was that the intelligence community has linked this particular balloon |
| 0:20.5 | that was shot down on Saturday to a vast surveillance program run by China's People's Liberation |
| 0:27.4 | Army. |
| 0:28.4 | Shane Harris covers national security for the post. |
| 0:33.6 | This has been going on for years, our sources tell us, and it partly operates out of a |
| 0:39.8 | coastal province in China and has been collecting information on military assets in countries |
| 0:46.4 | all around the world, but particularly countries that are interesting to China, including the |
| 0:51.0 | United States, Japan, India, Taiwan, among others. |
| 0:55.0 | So this balloon that we saw kind of dramatically traversing the United States the other day, |
| 1:00.2 | it is not alone. |
| 1:01.2 | There are many, many more balloons and they're being run by the PLA to gather information |
| 1:05.1 | around the world. |
| 1:08.6 | From the newsroom of the Washington Post, this is Post Reports. |
| 1:12.2 | I'm Ella Hay-Ezaddi. |
| 1:13.6 | It's Wednesday, February 8. |
| 1:16.4 | Today, I talked to Shane about new exclusive reporting from the post. |
| 1:21.4 | That balloon we all saw drift across the country last week, well, US intelligence officials |
| 1:26.6 | have linked it to a vast Chinese surveillance program. |
| 1:31.0 | Shane explains what kind of information China is trying to get and why everybody spies. |
... |
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