A US official revealed that the Chinese spy balloon that was seen over the United States much earlier this year apparently used an American internet provider to transmit periodic data related to navigation and location back to China. The balloon was shot down by the US in February and resulted in the further deterioration of already strained US-China relations.
According to CNN, the connection was one of the ways that the US was able to track the location of the spy balloon and gather information as it transited the American airspace, said the official. The internet service provider was not identified.
The Biden administration sought a highly secretive court order from the federal Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to collect intelligence about it while it was over the US, according to multiple current and former US officials, reported NBC News. This court order, unrevealed, would have allowed US intelligence agencies to conduct electronic surveillance on the balloon as it flew over the US.
The balloon stored the information used to transmit intelligence back to China, including images and other data, which the US has since been able to study after shooting it down in February. China has continued to maintain that the balloon was a weather balloon that blew off course.
The US intelligence community assessed that the spy balloon was part of an extensive surveillance program orchestrated by the Chinese military. The balloon fleet had conducted over two dozen missions across at least five continents in recent years, according to US officials.
The Chinese 'spy' balloon in US
The already strained relations between China and the US plunged further after US President Joe Biden ordered the shooting down of a Chinese spy balloon after it traversed the continental United States on January 28 this year. This also prompted US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to cancel his trip to Beijing.
On February 5, the US military shot down the Chinese spy balloon over the Atlantic Ocean and launched a mission to recover all the equipment from its debris, drawing a strong reaction from China which warned of repercussions over America's use of force against its civilian unmanned airship. Senior US officials claimed that the balloon had gathered intelligence from several sensitive American military sites.
Although Beijing accepted that the giant balloon was taken off from its territory but refuted the claims of sending spy equipment to the US. Instead, it termed the helium balloon a "weather data collector" and added it was floated towards the US by the flow of wind.
Later, Beijing claimed Washington of breaching its airspace at least ten times in the past 13 months. According to China, the US high-altitude balloons illegally flew over Chinese airspace on more than 10 occasions without the approval of the relevant Chinese authorities.
In June, US President Joe Biden said that Chinese leader Xi Jinping was caught off guard by the balloon’s whereabouts, telling guests at a political fundraiser that Xi “got very upset” after the US shot down the balloon because “he didn’t know it was there". He then compared him to "dictators" who were unaware of crucial developments.
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