S8 Ep832: 16/16: Jack Burnham discusses how Chinese commercial satellite firms provide the IRGC with high-resolution imagery to direct attacks against American assets. He differentiates this from the state-led surveillance of the Chinese balloon incident over
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 6 May 2026
⏱️ 5 minutes
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Summary
16/16: Jack Burnham discusses how Chinese commercial satellite firms provide the IRGC with high-resolution imagery to direct attacks against American assets. He differentiates this from the state-led surveillance of the Chinese balloon incident over U.S. missile silos, emphasizing China's broad campaign to disrupt American societal morale.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm John Batch with Thethe's Macotter, and we're enjoying our conversation about |
| 0:20.4 | how paranoid do you want to be |
| 0:22.2 | about China's campaign to intervene, to interrupt, to disrupt, to attack the United States |
| 0:28.9 | across a broad range, all under the control to my understanding of the Chinese Ministry of State |
| 0:34.6 | Security, the MSS. Jack, you list five things China, you and your |
| 0:39.4 | colleagues, five things China is doing in the Iran War that are certainly hostile, but the one I'm |
| 0:43.8 | focusing on is the commercial satellite sector. I'm presuming this imagery that the Iranians |
| 0:51.2 | have used is all under the bailiwick of the Ministry of State Security. Is that where |
| 0:55.9 | the balloons are as well? All surveillance heads to the MSS, Jack. So that's a good question. I think |
| 1:02.1 | it's important to separate out exactly the role that China is playing in the role that China could be |
| 1:07.2 | playing. And I think those are two different things. So when it comes to the Iran war, the best evidence suggests that China, that the Chinese firm, some of which have ties to the |
| 1:16.4 | Chinese military and some of which don't, are these are commercial satellite firms. So these are |
| 1:22.9 | firms that in another time, you know, different businesses could buy images from of fields or construction |
| 1:30.4 | infrastructure or anything else that would help, you know, plan their business decisions. |
| 1:35.4 | In this particular context, though, it's Chinese firms, some of which have have ties to the PLA |
| 1:41.0 | that are essentially selling and in communication with elements of the Iranian |
| 1:46.9 | Islamic regime that are selling pictures that are far better than what Iran could gain otherwise |
| 1:54.0 | are selling images of American airfields and basins in the region that are helping direct |
| 1:59.9 | Iranian missile and drone attacks. |
| 2:02.6 | And so here it's an interesting web of you have a Chinese commercial sector that is fundamentally dual use, |
| 2:08.6 | some of which is military, some of which, you know, it is at an arm's length or at least on the surface more commercial, |
| 2:17.1 | that is fulfilling these types of contracts with Iranian forces to help direct their missile and drone fire to strike American assets in the region. |
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