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The Chinese balloon debacle has shone a light on America's security vulnerabilities, but it has also revealed just how audacious and deceptive the Chinese Communist Party is. As with their reaction to Covid-19's origins, they have brazenly lied from the day that the balloon’s presence was made public. It is abundantly clear that the craft was not a weather balloon, not least because of its uncharacteristically massive size. Yet China opted to construct a tall tale about a wandering weather balloon that somehow ended up over America. Oh, and the balloon over Latin America? That was just another errant storm tracker. Sure, China regrets the mishap, but there is no need to overreact. What makes the lie so extraordinary is that it is so easily debunked.

Joe Biden's meandering State of the Union left out a great many things, as his voice toggled between insincere whisper and frail bellow. The loudest moment of the night was when, going off-script from his prepared remarks, he insisted that really — c'mon, I really mean it! — China's Xi Jinping is being isolated from the world for some reason. https://twitter.com/greg_price11/status/1623157950654078977 "Name me a world leader who would change places with Xi Jinping! Name me one! Name me one!" Biden yelled. The comment had an air of frustration given that the humiliating Chinese spy balloon was fresh in the minds of all on Capitol Hill. "I’ve made clear with President Xi that we seek competition, not conflict," Biden said in his prepared remarks.

Former acting secretary of defense Christopher Miller challenged several of the major claims being made about the Chinese spy ballon that recently entered US airspace during a podcast interview Monday with The Spectator World.  Miller joined The District podcast to discuss the Chinese spy balloon and his new book, Soldier Secretary: Warnings from the Battlefield and the Pentagon about America's Most Dangerous Enemies. The Biden administration shot down the balloon off the South Carolina coast on Saturday after it had been floating across the United States for nearly a week. Following its destruction, administration officials claimed that other Chinese spy balloons had entered the US "at least three times" during the Trump administration.

The Associated Press (AP) appeared to stealth edit a major report on the Chinese spy balloon, which was the origin of the claim that two such balloons also entered US airspace during the Trump administration. The AP first published the article on Saturday. The balloon was then shot down after floating for several days over the US. Deep into the report, the AP cited one unnamed Biden administration official who claimed that two similar incidents "happened twice during the Trump administration but [were] never made public." [caption id="attachment_45048" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] The Associated Press's first iteration of the Chinese spy balloon story (Screenshot: Internet Archive)[/caption] However, the AP article looked different on Sunday.

Military fighter jets have just shot down the Chinese Communist Party's gigantic spy balloon that had been hovering about 60,000 feet over the United States. The balloon was "taken care of," to quote President Biden, over the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of South Carolina. Prior to the maneuver, the balloon drifted, unharmed, over our sensitive military sites and fellow citizens. It lingered there, doing what Chinese President Xi Jinping pleased, while rightfully indignant members of Congress representing those violated states took to press releases and cable TV to demand the federal government secure our sovereign airspace. All of this was no doubt churned back through the CCP's propaganda outlets, smearing America as divided, weak, and foolish.

Like many of you, Cockburn has been following the developing story involving the Chinese spy balloon currently hovering over Montana. For those unaware, sometime over the last few days a spy balloon has floated over the Aleutian Islands in Alaska, across Canadian airspace and entered into Montana, where it's been for several days. It traveled at an altitude of around 50,000ft and is currently not far from the 341st Missile Wing at Malmstrom Air Force Base, which houses a portion of America's intercontinental ballistic missiles, among many other key military assets.

Twenty-five years ago, bipartisan American consensus about China was built on hope, spin and money. Despite the trauma of Tiananmen Square and caution about China’s true economic intentions, many believed in the potential of capitalist principles to move the Chinese Communist Party into a more open, less aggressive posture. Henry Kissinger wrote books about it; pundits and think-tank scholars gave speeches about it; Republicans and Democrats alike parroted the line well into the twenty-first century. Tom Friedman even dreamed ambitiously of what the United States could accomplish if only it were willing to be “China for a day.” What followed? As Harold Macmillan put it, “Events, dear boy, events.