The Chinese balloon that transited the United States earlier this year used an American internet service provider (ISP) to send short and periodic transmissions of data related to navigation and location back to China, news broadcasters NBC and CNN said, citing American intelligence agencies officials.
Due to the connection established between the American ISP and the spy balloon, the US was able to track its location and gather information on the balloon as it transited the United States, the people mentioned above said. Who the ISP was is not yet found but it was earlier known that the spy balloon was capable of communicating with Beijing as it travelled across the US.
The official said that the network connection was not used to send intelligence back to China but the balloon stored that information for sharing later and it also included imagery and other data, which the US has studied after shooting it down in February.
China says that the balloon was a weather balloon that strayed course. The Americans said at the time that the spy balloon was part of an extensive surveillance program run by the Chinese military, according to a report by CNN.
The people mentioned above said that the balloon fleet conducted over two dozen missions over at least five continents in recent years. They also said that leaders of the Communist Party of China (CPC) did not want the balloon to cross over the United States and reprimanded the operators of the surveillance program because of the issue.
US President Joe Biden in June said his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping was caught off-guard by the balloon’s presence in the US. He told guests at a fundraiser that the Chinese President was very upset because the US shot down the balloon and also due to the fact that he did not know the balloon strayed to the US.
He then compared Xi to “dictators” who become embarrassed when they are not aware of or know what’s going on.
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