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.
That’s my point. The original poster is trying to draw a line between statements that the balloon was a spying device and later statements that it did not collect intelligence while it transited over US territory as evidence that it wasn’t a spying device and that the former of those statements is therefore inherently a lie. My take, without assessing the truthfulness of the claims, is that the linked articles do not support such a conclusion. One can claim the device was for spying and that it also didn’t collect intelligence without contradiction because the claim is that it failed to collect intelligence, not that it did not intend to do so in the first place.
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.
@yogthos laugh if you want. But you’re an idiot if you think otherwise.
“But it has been our assessment now that it did not collect while it was transiting the United States or over flying the United States".
He said the efforts the US took to mitigate any intelligence gathering “contributed” to the balloon’s failure to gather sensitive information.”
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.
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.
What I understand from the context is that it was a spying device but they jammed the hell out of it while flying over the US then took it down.
That’s my point. The original poster is trying to draw a line between statements that the balloon was a spying device and later statements that it did not collect intelligence while it transited over US territory as evidence that it wasn’t a spying device and that the former of those statements is therefore inherently a lie. My take, without assessing the truthfulness of the claims, is that the linked articles do not support such a conclusion. One can claim the device was for spying and that it also didn’t collect intelligence without contradiction because the claim is that it failed to collect intelligence, not that it did not intend to do so in the first place.
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.
The context for the discussion is US admitting that the balloon did not collect information. 🤡
@yogthos @steltek pffft…the ballon did not “transmit” any information. It absolutely did try to collect information. Stop telling lies.
It did not “collect” information
@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.
It did not collect information. You’re hallucinating statements that don’t exist and you’re also hallucinating propagandists that don’t exist.
I’d ask you to get it checked out, but I’m afraid that you’d hallucinate a doctor that doesn’t exist.
@zephyreks There you go again. You’re either blatantly trying to mislead people or you’re an idiot.
"But “it has been our assessment now that it did not collect while it was transiting the United States or over flying the United States”.
He said the efforts the US took to mitigate any intelligence gathering “contributed” to the balloon’s failure to gather sensitive information."
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66062562
😂
@yogthos laugh if you want. But you’re an idiot if you think otherwise.
“But it has been our assessment now that it did not collect while it was transiting the United States or over flying the United States".
He said the efforts the US took to mitigate any intelligence gathering “contributed” to the balloon’s failure to gather sensitive information.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66062562.amp
😂
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:
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.