Exposing the Chinese Spy Balloon Fleet

The Pentagon said Wednesday that the balloon is part of a global fleet China has been operating for several years. Such Red Zeppelins have been spotted over “at least five continents,” including countries in Europe, Southeast Asia and South America.

The Defense Department says it’s confident this latest balloon was launched to get a close-up peek at America’s “strategic sites,” perhaps including intercontinental ballistic-missile bases in Montana. U.S. officials say at least four other balloons have surfaced over U.S. soil in recent years—though, shockingly, we only detected them after the fact. Civilian Trump officials were never informed.

The Biden Administration has said that one reason it didn’t shoot down the object earlier—say, as it crossed Alaska’s wide open spaces—was so U.S. intelligence could learn more about the balloon’s operation. Press reports say U.S. military assets accompanied the balloon on its final float. Americans are rightly absorbed with the episode, and it’s a teaching moment about Chinese ambitions and U.S. vulnerability.

A U.S. general said earlier this week that the blimp had a payload the size of a regional jetliner. Was it capable of carrying electromagnetic weapons, or blowing up on command?

The Administration is also now leaking to the press that the balloon could loiter on sites longer than satellites on low-earth orbit, after insisting for days the balloon presented no advantage over China’s other intelligence methods. Was it picking up signals that satellites can’t? Was it sending real-time data back to its overlords in Beijing?

An instructive if less threatening precedent here is the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, when American U-2 spy planes captured photos of an enormous Soviet nuclear missile buildup 90 miles from Florida. The Kennedy Administration brain trust debated whether to inform the public or keep it quiet. The White House decided to show the world the threat, and the U.S. presented photographic proof of the missiles at a confrontation with the Soviets at the U.N. It helped to sway global opinion.

Navy divers are now salvaging debris from the balloon, and the U.S. ought to put it on display for the world to see, complete with experts explaining what it reveals about what China was up to. Put it all on stage, not merely in a Pentagon basement.

The Administration may fear a public airing of the spy balloon fleet could inflame Beijing and preclude a calmer relationship. But the opposite may be true. The real worry should be that the incident blows over without consequences and China’s war hawks conclude that such provocations are manageable risks.

The Biden crowd is no doubt eager to move on from the balloon affair, but the stakes are larger than their own embarrassment. Let’s show the world the truth about how China thinks it can act with impunity.