I’m not understanding the contradiction here. They’re saying it was a spy balloon for spying but that it failed at its task. Not sure how true that is, no way for me to tell but there’s no inherent paradox here.
US already admitted earlier that this is in fact a weather balloon, and this is further proof that it was not any sort of a spy balloon. The whole drama was completely made up, and the highest US authorities continue to spread lies months after.
Umm, source on an official US statement calling it a weather balloon and denying it was a spy balloon? China’s alleged failure to collect data due to mitigations and countermeasures doesn’t mean it’s a weather balloon.
You have no facts to backup “US spreading lies”. No evidence whatsoever. You have the US’ story, China’s story, and millions of photos of a absurdly large apparatus floating across the US that looks nothing like a weather balloon.
@zephyreks ...but it wasn't from lack of trying... the countermeasures the US used kept it from collecting any sensitive intelligence. That's the part you propagandists keep leaving out.
I’m seriously confused where you get your impression from. It’s been known that lead exposure leads to hallucinations, so you might want to get your paint checked out?
@zephyreks You could only be seriously confused about where I get my "impression" from if you're an absolute idiot considering I included the link to the BBC article where I got that "impression".
Yeah, we agree that it was not collected. But, you keep leaving out the part about where they tried. Make sure you put that in your talking points next time. They tried but failed. Ergo, they did not collect any intelligence.
@zephyreks dude I don’t know any other way to explain it to you so that you can comprehend it. The balloon was trying to collect information and was thwarted. You have it from a brigadier general that mitigation efforts certainly contributed to the balloon not collecting any information. You can try and act like it was just not collecting information out of the goodness of the Chinese’s heart, but that is a blatant misrepresentation of fact.
Not according to the Pentagon, which last I checked was a more reliable source than a single General. A General can say whatever they want, but the Pentagon has to actually check facts.
@zephyreks You work for the Pentagon? I notice that you've made that claim twice without any reference material to justify your claim. But sure, if you feel the need to impune the character of a US Brigadere General and esentially call him in a liar, I know who I'm going to trust and it's not your word.
Q: So you believe your efforts stopped it from collecting and transmitting or was it able to collect but just not able to transmit?
GEN. RYDER: We believe that it did not collect while it was transiting the United States or flying over the United States, and certainly the efforts that we made contributed, I’m sure.
The question gave two possibilities: it collected and didn’t transmit, and it didn’t collect. The General states that it didn’t collect, and he’s sure that they were able to mitigate anything if it did collect (which it didn’t). Basic English. He also does not refer to the balloon as a spy balloon FWIW, correcting the journalist who did refer to it as one.
To avoid any potential data collection? The US didn’t know what the balloon’s capabilities or purpose were until they shot it down. Until then, treat everything as a threat. It’s SOP.
@zephyreks That means it wasn't able to collect data in part because of the countermeasures that contributed to preventing it from collecting data. If that was not the case, why wouldn't the BG have just said, "no it wouldn't have mattered because it wasn't trying to collect data."?
Because they needed to justify the hassle and spending they spent trying to prevent it from collecting? Do you think the US military budget grows on trees?
@zephyreks lol I can’t imagine the mental gymnastics you have to jump through to arrive at your worldview. For you to think that in that moment, while being questioned by a reporter about a Chinese balloon and the collection of data that his immediate thought was I need to justify the budget… It’s just astounding.
@zephyreks No, because you'd just make up some kind of reason why a Brigadier General would lie or obfuscate the truth instead of following Occam's Razor and understanding that no more assumptions than necessary are reasonable to answer a question. You pulling some bullshit out of your ass about budgetary concerns is a step beyond Occam's razor. That's why I say you don't see reason. You're relying on hypotheticals to justify your position instead of the facts right in front of your face.
@zephyreks Not directly, he just said that the countermeasures the US took contributed to stopping it from doing so, so...
...this is where you inserted your bullshit about it being because he was trying to justify the budget because of the training he had and that all military leaders in the US are trained to lie and mislead the press because you know... the military budget that literally no one in Congress is concerned about and increases every year regardless if they even ask for it.
That part of the story seems yet to be cited. Going by the article accompanying the post title, there’s no such admission. Manufacturing international incidents for political reasons is not a new thing and not new to the US either , but purely on grounds of reading comprehension alone there’s no contradiction here and no admission of anything either, as a matter of fact the claim the US is making is supposed to bolster their position by claiming the balloon was unable to spy on them despite best efforts. The veracity of the claim is another matter.
Thing is that the whole story does not stand up to scrutiny. US admitted that they tracked the balloon from the start and that it’s most likely been blown off course:
U.S. intelligence agencies tracked the Chinese spy balloon from its launch in China and watched as it may have been inadvertently blown into U.S. airspace, a U.S. official has confirmed to ABC News.
This latest revelation differs significantly from the previous narrative related by the White House and U.S. military officials over recent days, which has changed repeatedly since the balloon’s existence became public when it was spotted over Montana on Feb. 1.
The above paragraph basically says that US officials intentionally lied from the start. All the further evidence that’s come out continues to support the idea that this wasn’t any sort of a spy balloon. The real story here is why does US is trying to escalate tensions with China.
Thanks. You should post that article too, seems fuller and links to a Washington Post article with a little more detail as well. Frankly I’d largely forgotten about the whole balloon incident as the whole thing at the time was a confusing mess of misinformation and internal and external posturing from Washing and Beijing as well that made whatever publicly available truth that could be gleaned so warped that most of the nuance was lost in my mind and I just mentally filed it under “what the fuck?”
I would maintain though that you seem to trying to put together a “gotcha!” narrative about the US perspective on the matter using source material that doesn’t really paint that picture. The shifting and changing story wrapped up in geopolitical intrigue has a whiff to it for sure but no one seems to be “admitting” anything in the any of what you linked. The weird thing about the idea that anyone is admitting something, is that all of the “admissions” are part of a set of claims that the US would want to promulgate and indeed are.
They are seeking maximum political advantage from this balloon incident, so they say it was a spy balloon, because they want China to appear to be doing wrong by spying, this necessarily means saying they somehow allowed a spy balloon that everybody could see with the naked eye and which was apparently very dangerous to national security to just drift unchecked in to their airspace and see all manner of sensitive things, so they say they tracked it from that start because they’re too compotent to let something like this pass them by, oh and also it didn’t really manage to spy on them because they “took steps” and therefore it didn’t transmit any intelligence. The story seems iffy but to believe it would be to buy in to the official preferred narrative offered by Washington, not a bunch of leaked admissions they were hoping to keep on the down-low
The idea of it drifting accidentally from an originally more limited but still surveillance related mission is an interesting twist to the story, I guess either because it’s what really seems to have happened or maybe because it provides a kind of a safety valve for them to ratchet up tensions whilst still kind of not directly accusing Beijing in case things start to get a little too hot in the diplomatic realm and they need to cool things down. This helps them get out of a tangle but still paint China as incompetent spies who accidentally sent the balloon on a more obvious course where it would be seen and intercepted, but who essentially didn’t mean to be quite so bold and had only more limited intentions.
I’d argue that western media uses misleading phrasing to create a reasonable doubt, but when you look at the actual facts it’s pretty clear that US is just playing games here and created a story out of whole cloth here. The fact that they can’t even get their story straight is pretty damning all of itself in my opinion. US has also never actually explained what sort of intelligence such a balloon could possibly intercept that a satellite couldn’t.
Balloons that follow air currents have blown of course more than once, wow that’s sinister. The fact that US reacted in an absolutely deranged fashion to a weather balloon being blown off course is the real story here. It shows the whole world that US is run by a dangerous and unstable regime. The fact that such unhinged lunatics have the second largest nuclear arsenal in the world should worry everyone.
But real weather balloons do not follow air currents. They ascend and descend over the same point, so that they can be easily recovered by real scientists. Real weather balloons are also far smaller. Various scientists, not just Americans, said that the Chinese balloons did not resemble the instruments they use.
I’m afraid you are the one making things up. The article doesn’t say anything about balloons following air currents, quite the opposite:
That’s because balloons still offer unique advantages: They don’t disturb their surrounding environment, they’re very gentle on scientific instruments, they can hover in one place for extended periods of time
Normal weather balloons are far smaller and incapable of crossing an ocean. The Chinese balloon was not a normal weather balloon.
This is going to blow your mind, but there are different kinds of balloons for different purposes. Also, the word can has a different meaning from the world must. Perhaps work on your reading comprehension?
Sure, it’s possible that China deployed a completely novel type of weather balloon. But if so, it should not be surprised by the interception of its unusual balloon when it entered US airspace.
For that matter, if you designed a brand new weather instrument that was carried in the back of a Cessna, and then you flew that Cessna into Chinese airspace to carry out your measurements, then you should expect to be intercepted and probably arrested. After all, Mathias Rust was sentenced to four years for violating Soviet airspace.
It’s not a completely novel type of balloon, these types of balloons have been used literally for decades. I love how you keep lying about something that’s very easy to verify. At this point you’re just exposing yourself as a clown.
You should read the articles before you link to them. This one describes normal weather balloons, which are far smaller than the Chinese balloons and can only travel about 100 miles.
What does that have to do with anything. Just to repeat this, the context of the whole discussion is that US *admitted that there is no spy equipment on the balloon. The fact that you keep keep digging here is absolutely hilarious. You made an absurd statement that is disproved by 2 seconds of googling. Then you got called out on it, and instead of admitting that you stated nonsense you just keep doubling down. It’s absolutely incredible to watch.
US *admitted that there is no spy equipment on the balloon.
Once again, you are making things up.
The US said the spy balloon was certainly capable of spying, but it did not collect information over the US, in part because of the American response.
“We’re aware that it had intelligence collection capabilities, but it was our – and it has been our – assessment now that it did not collect while it was transiting the United States,” Ryder said during a briefing, adding, “As we said at the time, we also took steps to mitigate the potential collection efforts.”
Even the headline to the original article said the balloon did not collect information. It never said the balloon did not carry surveillance equipment, you incorrectly assumed that.
Can’t say I believe that one bit. With how small transmitters can be these days, why wouldn’t it have one? Sounds to me like damage control. Not a whole lot of details in the article anyway.
I don’t want a war with China, that would be awful. I’m just trying to be realistic about it. Seems silly to go through the trouble to make a surveillance craft like that and it not even have the capability to beam back any data.
I’m just gonna be open minded about it and not jump to conclusions. I could see the US gov making it into a big deal for reasons and I could see it being a balloon to take pics of bases, etc on the ground. Both seem like logical outcomes. I mean it could be a weather balloon but I sorta doubt it based on what I know about weather balloons (I’m an amateur weather nerd). But I could be wrong! I’ll admit that. Gotta keep an open mind.
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