Originally published at: China claims U.S. has sent 10 of its own balloons over | Boing Boing
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Interestingly, the BBC reports that Chinese state media is giving enormous coverage to the Ohio rail crash:
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I wouldn’t be surprised if the White House claims are technically true. We just use other techniques.
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And they shot down exactly how many of them to show the world some proof?
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I honestly don’t know why you’d think that we’re not doing similar spying things? I mean… that’s the game. It’s not like we did not also spy on the soviet union and steal their classified shit during the cold war and had some sort of moral high ground in that regard… 
It’s a standard and accepted part of the current interstate system. All countries spy on pretty much all other countries, whatever their political systems.
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At the same time, state media has begun focusing on a different narrative - a derailed train carrying hazardous material in Ohio.
Though the incident happened in early February, Chinese news outlets are now devoting significant coverage on the topic, citing US media reports. US officials have performed a controlled release of toxic chemicals from the train to prevent contamination.
It has since become a significant talking point on social media. On Weibo, China’s equivalent to Twitter, the main Ohio train hashtag has been viewed more than 690 million times since the weekend, with more than 40 hashtags created on the topic.
Many Chinese netizens have expressed worry that the incident would turn into a global environmental crisis, and anger over the relatively sparser coverage of the train incident in US media compared to the balloons.
“Turns out the Wandering Balloon was being used to take the heat for Ohio,” a post liked nearly 3,000 times reads.
Obviously both events are worthy of serious media attention, and 3,000 likes on Weibo isn’t really evidence their strategy is working. But part of the Chinese propaganda strategy is to convince Americans that the Ohio derailment is being ignored at best or covered up at worst. Is there evidence of that?
In reality, we should be asking whether, say, the Super Bowl deserves as much airtime as it has received in light of current events. But I’d be wary of taking Chinese state media bait on this.
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Maybe…
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Kirby said there were none so there you go. Don’t we believe our government?
I really don’t expect our defense department or intelligence agencies to admit to anything. It’s called spying for a reason and I’m okay with that. Without spies we wouldn’t have any decent shoe phones or cones of silence.
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A lot of bs commentary about these balloons, here is mine. It can’t cost more than $10,000 to float one of these with some junk equipment. A sidewinder missle costs minimum of $250,000 but the cost to scramble jets, recover the balloon etc etc, Must be over a million or more. It’s a war of economics.
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Yesterday, my very-online Chinese colleagues surrounded me to say that American media is conspiring with the federal government to suppress information about the train derailment. We’re in Philadelphia and one Chinese couple in the group is sending their 2-month old baby to Wuhan to indefinitely live with his grandparents because they’re convinced that we’re all going to be poisoned on the east coast. This devolved into a Chinese national I work with quite closely calling me a monster for not being scared about the spill. There was also some stuff about Tibetans murdering children to harvest their bones.
I’d say the diversion strategy is working at least a bit.
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It spread in my country two. In Brazil It is being called Chernobyl 2.0, but is only one of these things restritected to social media.
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Exactly, hell we even famously spied on Angela Merkel, and Germany is supposed to be our ally. Whether we are spying on China specifically with high altitude balloons specifically or not, we are for sure doing equivalent things.
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The US (and other countries tbf) also loves playing games with language. So when they say “we do not operate surveillance balloons over China”, that wouldn’t preclude (for example) giving surveillance balloons to Taiwan, and having Taiwan ‘operate’ the balloons (with plenty help from of US ‘advisors’), and sending a copy of the data back to the US.
The above is my made up example, but in the late 1950’s, the CIA put RAF pilots in U2 spy-planes, because they couldn’t get approval to risk US pilots over the USSR. British pilots were ok, and of course Britain was only too happy to help, for a copy of any intelligence they found.
It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if something similar was going on here.
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Or: if it has any means of propulsion, it’s not a balloon, it’s a blimp. If it generates lift it’s a UAV.
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I bet that ballon was made in Usa, Ōita. Usa is famous for the “Patriot” hockey puck, Nectar Sleep mattresses, Veterans hats for US Military Veterans, and United States of America flags. Basically they specialize in textiles.
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