WASHINGTON - The Biden administration provided its most comprehensive description of the Chinese spy balloon that flew over the United States last week, saying Thursday that the device was part of a global surveillance fleet run by the Chinese military and was capable of picking up electronic communications.
The findings were outlined in a State Department document, according to which the US military had sent Cold War-era U-2 spy planes to track and study the balloon before it was shot down by a fighter jet over the Atlantic Ocean on Saturday.
Chinese spy balloons
have flown over more than 40 countries on five continents
, according to the Biden government, and appear to be made by one or more companies that officially sell products to the Chinese military.
That finding underscores doubts among US officials about links between some civilian-run companies in China and the country's military, in what US officials call "civilian-military fusion."
President Joe Biden, with President Xi Jinping.
The balloon incident has pushed rival superpowers at diplomatic distance.
(Doug Mills/The New York Times)
American surveillance planes took pictures of the balloon while it was still in the air.
Its visible equipment, which included antennae, "was clearly for intelligence surveillance and inconsistent with equipment aboard weather balloons," the State Department said - a rebuttal to the Chinese government's claim that the balloon was a weather machine. civilian that had strayed from its course.
The balloon episode has sparked a rise in tensions between the United States and China at a time when the relationship is already at one of its lowest points in decades.
Although top US officials affirm their intention to keep communication channels with China open, the
competing narratives about the globe are sowing more conflict
.
And the Biden administration has launched a campaign to inform countries around the world of the scope of China's spy balloon program and its violations of sovereignty, in the hope that other nations will oppose Chinese spy activities.
Investigators from the Pentagon, FBI and other agencies are examining wreckage that the US Navy has pulled from the shallow waters off the South Carolina coast.
FBI officials said Thursday they were analyzing material from the balloon's body, wiring and small amounts of electronics found floating in the water, all from wreckage that was turned over on or after Monday.
Investigators believe most of the electronics are scattered on the ocean floor, FBI officials said.
The balloon was 60 meters tall and had a payload the size of a regional jet, US officials said earlier.
Some officials said it
is a priority to know exactly what kind of communications information the balloon could pick up.
Officials have said they have not found any evidence to suggest the balloon could carry weapons.
Investigators are also looking to see if any of the balloon equipment uses US technology or technology from other Western companies, US officials said.
Any such discovery could prompt the Biden administration to take stronger measures to ensure that companies do not export technology to China that could be used by the country's military and security agencies.
President Joe Biden and his aides have already imposed sweeping limits on sales of "foundational technologies" to China.
Specifically, the US government announced in October that it was
banning US companies from selling
advanced semiconductor chips and certain chip-making technology to China.
The new rules are also intended to prevent foreign companies from doing the same.
The aim of export controls is to stifle Chinese development of advanced technologies, particularly tools used by the Chinese military.
Biden has stressed the importance of maintaining independent supply chains in critical sectors, a point he made in his State of the Union address on Tuesday.
US officials said they hope the recovered pieces of the balloon give them some idea of how Chinese engineers are assembling the surveillance technology.
"We are looking at them to learn more about the surveillance program," Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday.
"We'll combine that with what we learn from the balloon - what we learn from the balloon itself - with what we've gathered based on our careful observation of the system when it was in our airspace, as the president directed his team to do." .
The State Department claimed in its document that the US government was certain that
the company that made the balloon had direct business ties to the People's Liberation Army
, the Chinese military, citing an official army procurement website.
The department did not give the name of the company.
President Donald Trump signed a memorandum announcing annual tariffs on about $60 billion worth of Chinese imports in 2018. (Doug Mills/The New York Times)
"The United States will also explore action against PRC [People's Republic of China] entities linked to the PLA [People's Liberation Army] that supported the balloon's incursion into US airspace," the State Department said.
"We will also consider broader efforts to expose and address the PRC's larger surveillance activities that pose a threat to our national security, and to our allies and partners."
The department said the company advertises balloon products on its website and has posted videos of previous flights that appear to have flown over US and other nations' airspace.
The videos show balloons having flight patterns similar to the surveillance balloons the United States has been discussing this week, the agency said.
The State Department document says the downed balloon's antenna array was "likely capable of collecting and geo-locating communications," while its solar arrays were large enough to produce power to
operate "multiple active collecting sensors." Intelligence".
Intelligence agencies have concluded that the antennas were capable of locating communications devices, including mobile phones and radios, and collecting data from them, US officials said.
But they don't know exactly what kinds of devices were targeted, two officials said.
Radio frequencies can be detected by orbiting satellites.
Mobile phone signals are more difficult to detect from space, but they reach as high as the place where the balloon was drifting, at 18,000 meters.
Intelligence agencies still don't know, according to authorities, whether the balloon was meant to fly over parts of the United States - including nuclear weapons sites - or if it veered off course or suffered a mechanical failure.
Authorities are confident they have
prevented the balloon from collecting sensitive data from nuclear facilities
and other US military bases.
The US government also took steps to protect official communications, but officials said they weren't sure what the balloon picked up.
Wendy Sherman, deputy secretary of state, told a Senate committee on Thursday that the spy balloon episode "revealed what we have long recognized: the PRC has become more repressive at home and more aggressive abroad."
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