What China's spy balloon reveals about Chinese and U.S. espionage and diplomacy
On Point with Meghna Chakrabarti
WBUR
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 14 February 2023
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Before the shooting down of more unidentified aerial objects over the past few days, there was the China spy balloon. That gave us a rare glimpse into spycraft between the U.S. and China. What have we learned?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is on point. I'm Megna Chakrabardi. The US has now shot down four objects that entered |
| 0:09.2 | American airspace. The high altitude Chinese surveillance balloon shot down ten days |
| 0:14.0 | ago, and three other, as of yet unidentified objects over the weekend. As for those three, |
| 0:20.8 | there's been enough speculation about their origins, that this week White House press |
| 0:25.7 | Secretary of Korean Jean Pierre felt compelled to state on the record, there is no, again, no |
| 0:32.0 | indication of aliens or extraterrestrial activity. With these recent takedowns, again, wanted to make |
| 0:39.1 | sure that the American people knew that, all of you knew that, and it was important for us to say |
| 0:44.1 | that from here because we've been hearing a lot about it. So the truth is still out there, |
| 0:49.5 | but in all seriousness, the air incursions are no laughing matter because they signal out in |
| 0:54.5 | the open. The latest escalation intentions between the United States and China. Biden administration |
| 1:01.2 | officials John Kirby of the National Security Council and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, |
| 1:05.9 | who was in Brussels yesterday, both said the objects indicate the extent of China's operations |
| 1:11.3 | in and over the United States. We don't know if they were actually collecting intelligence, |
| 1:16.9 | but because of the route that they took out of an abundance of caution, we want to make sure |
| 1:22.0 | that we have the ability to examine what these things are and potentially what they were doing. |
| 1:26.5 | We were able to determine that China has a high altitude balloon program for intelligence collection. |
| 1:32.3 | That's connected to the People's Liberation Army. It was operating during the previous |
| 1:36.9 | administration, but they did not detect it. We detected it. We tracked it. And we have been |
| 1:43.2 | carefully studying it to learn as much as we can. In fact, the Biden administration last week |
| 1:48.2 | claimed that China had sent surveillance balloons over more than 40 nations on five continents. |
| 1:53.8 | Meanwhile, in China, foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said yesterday that it's the United |
| 2:00.6 | States that repeatedly violates Chinese national security. The intrusion of air space by |
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