Cold-war lessons from China’s spy balloon

There was something almost comic about the immense Chinese balloon, carrying equipment the size of a small passenger plane, that drifted over America for days until it was popped on February 4th by an American fighter jet. As cold-war-type moments go, it was light relief compared with, say, the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 or the crash-landing in 2001 of an American spyplane after a Chinese fighter collided with it. But this was no joke. America said the balloon was spying. For ordinary Americans, the threat from China was suddenly visible, overhead. In his state-of-the-union speech on February 7th, President Joe Biden warned: “make no mistake about it…if China threatens our sovereignty, we will act to protect our country. And we did.”

American spooks play down what the balloon—or weather-observation craft, as China’s government insists—discovered as it floated near military sites, including a base in Montana with Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles. But they say that was because they tracked it closely and ensured no sensitive activities or communications took place within its range. Examination of its debris may reveal more about the operation, which America says is part of a vast aerial surveillance project based on Hainan island in southern China, which has targeted countries on five continents.