Angry Planet - It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's a ... Balloon?

Episode Date: February 21, 2023

What’s the biggest Chinese threat to the United States? Well, if you ask security expert Stephanie Carvin, it’s not a balloon—no matter how large and how many missiles it takes to shoot down. So, what should we really be worried about from China’s security apparatus? Well, you could start with more traditional spying, but there’s a lot more to it than that.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. People live in a world with their own making. Frankly, that seems to be the problem. Welcome to Angry Planet. Hello, and welcome to Angry Planet.

I am Jason Fields. And I'm Matthew Gould. A million years ago, a small man stared into the sky and said, the plane, the plane! Today, we're all shouting balloon. What's going on and what kind of threat are we actually facing? To answer that, joining us today is Stephanie Carvin,

who is an associate professor of international relations at Carlton University and a contributing author to the Center for International Governance Innovation. Thank you very much for joining us. Hey, thanks for having me on. For the Jen Ziers in the audience, I feel like I need to explain. Yeah, please do. The terribly Gen X reference that you just deployed on us in the opening. It's even older than me.

It's almost a boomer reference. It is almost a boomer reference. There's a television show in the 70s called The Love Boat. Fantasy Island. Fantasy Island? It was Fantasy Island. Okay, sorry. See, I get all these, I get all of these hour-long fantasy dramas from the 70s

confused. Peter Dinklage starred in a made for TV film on HBO about that actor's life. And we will move on now to balloons. I was just going to say, I mean, I'm not on here to talk about, you know, 1970s sitcoms and TV shows, although we could. Right. I would be very happy to do that. But yeah, I was going to say, I'm not sure I could tell those two shows apart. Yeah, thank you. Well, thank you.

I'm going to, I'm willing to bet. I'm older than both of you. Perhaps combined. Okay. So let's get back to spy balloons. So what's a spy balloon and what do you think they really do? So a spy balloon. I mean, apparently there are a thing.

Okay. Let's just put that out there that, you know, we have heard, you know, this seemed very novel when this happened about, what, a week and a half ago now, almost two weeks ago. And, you know, everyone's kind of looking in the sky. guy in seeing the spy balloon. It does seem something out of like an H.G. Wells novel in some ways. It reminds me of, you know, in the late 1800s, there were actually laws a past about aerial bombardments from balloons. So the idea of balloons playing a role is not entirely foreign, but the idea

that this would be happening in 2023 is, I think, a little bizarre, which is probably why we're talking about it. And, but apparently this has been something that China's been doing. for some time. Some of the reports that of Taiwan say, oh, yeah, we're used to balloons flying over us all the time. There are reports that the U.S. has been tracking balloons over the Middle East for a number of years, so not just North America. And this seems to be some, there seems to be some kind of intelligence collection or information collection that China is doing that they seem to be getting some kind of benefit out of. but it's not entirely clear what. China is basically saying, look, this is a weather bullying program. You know, we're just doing scientific research.

But I think what's important to recognize is that China's not always made a clear line between what is a research scientific expedition and intelligence collecting expedition. And, you know, I'm Canadian. We have in Canada seen Chinese research ice breaking vessels go through our territory. and, you know, again, China will say those are for scientific purposes, but clearly they're also probably looking for information that would assist their national interests. So even if this is some kind of weather balloon program, there probably is an intelligence component to it, but it's not clear to me what exactly what kind of intelligence you would get, considering the vast array of intelligence apparatus activities that China regularly engages in across the West. So, yeah, I mean, honestly, I've been kind of leaving, looking at this whole situation, scratching my head going, but why? Like, what was the, I guess they keep coming back to, what was the pitch meeting for this?

Like, what was the board room meeting where someone had a PowerPoint and said, yes, I have the solution. It was balloons. And I just would have loved to have been in that room and seeing what that conversation looked like. Let's back up a little bit. I kind of want to go over the basics of what has happened in the, last two weeks because we had, all right, so the big news story, was it about two weeks ago now, was the, was a balloon spotted over the Midwest in America, floats for several days, shot down by an F-22 firing a sidewinder missile above Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

Then Canada said they were tracking one, right? Yes. And they said actually that they were tracking one in a suspected second. Right. So Canada was actually the first to come out and say, no, there's more than one balloon here, guys. Shot down over Lake Huron by F-16s. They missed the first shot. Hit the second one. Second one is the one that's kind of weird, though, because it's like a weird shape and no one's quite sure who owns it or who it belonged to. Yeah, there's four balloons here, right? So there was the original one that was shot down rather spectacularly over Murdo Beach, you know, USA, USA. Fair enough. And then there was one that the United States shot down near Alaska, which they're still trying to recover. Apparently landed on some ice and the conditions are very hard to go there. There was a third balloon, which is then shot down in a remote area of the northern Yukon. Again, very, very hard to get to not a lot of infrastructure up there. And then finally, the fourth balloon, which was on Sunday of this week, you know, early February, the balloon was shot down over Lake Huron. And you're right. All of these balloons are different sizes, shapes, and what's curious to me is they're all flying at different altitudes.

The original balloon itself was flying at about 60,000 feet. And that is interesting because it's getting close to what the U.S. military and I think scientists call near space, right? It's an area where it's too high really for planes to fly. There's not enough oxygen. I can't really support a lot of activities up there. So there's some concern that there's military potential there. for things like, I guess, balloons, communications, things like that. So it kind of makes sense to have a balloon at that 60,000 feet. And it was big and round, and we all saw it. And then, but these other objects that have been shot down. And we should be clear, like, you know, they haven't definitively been called balloons. They haven't definitively been identified as Chinese. We should be careful about this. They've all been described as very different. The one over. The first one, the first one was the Chinese owned it. Yes, the Chinese owned it.

But I don't think they've owned the other three. They have not owned the other three now. Right. And so I don't know if they're just not wanting to or if it's in fact something else. We don't know. The one over Yukon, for example, was cylindrical shaped. And as you said, the one for Lake Huron was octagon, as described as an octagon, which is a really bizarre shape if you think about it. But I would love to see a picture of it and what actually look like. But yeah, that's the object that's believed to fall.

So they're all kind of different shapes and sizes. While the original was flying at that 60,000 feet, the one over Lake Huron was flying at 20,000 feet, which actually does make it more risk to aircraft, frankly. So there doesn't seem to be a lot of consistency, and that just kind of raises more questions than answers, I think. Do we then want to use the Pentagon terminology? for these things? Is there technically unidentified aerial phenomena, right?

Are you trying to say they're UFOs? I mean, they are, like, in the strictest sense of the word, I'm not saying they're aliens, but they are UFOs, right? Let's use that internet meme.

Yeah. It's not aliens, but it's alien. Just to be clear for the agreed and listeners, for one second, I just want to be real clear.

I'm not saying these things. I'm literally saying that these are not aliens. I'm literally saying that. Jason, sorry. Okay, no, no, no. I actually have a theory about the other three. The first one, China believes it, you know, it hasn't admitted it's theirs.

I think the others are actually from a bond villain. Because if ever there was a bond villain plan, this is it. Yeah, that's one of the, that's one of the bizarre things to me, right, is how little, because, like, are near peer adversaries that could float a balloon over us, and not get picked up by NORAD until later and then destroyed, like presumably have satellite technology that can collect data much better than a balloon at high altitude, right? So, yeah, I mean, this is, I mean, this is part of the bizarre thing.

I mean, I like the Bond villain thesis just because apparently to take these things out and requires a $400,000 sidewinder missile, right? So every time we're shooting these things down, we're spending like millions, of dollars. And that doesn't include like the cost of the plane, the cost of the fuel, all these other things that kind of go into into these operations. So can you bankrupt the United States with balloons? I mean, it's a perfect Bonneville plot if you think about it. And apparently the first one I missed at Lake Huron. So I'm sorry to that F-16 pilot, but apparently now somewhere around Lake Huron, there's a missing side wonder missile

that someone may want to look into. So, yeah, I mean, it's, again, it's not clear to me what intelligence you would gather using balloons. The first balloon, and like, I guess I'm calling them balloons here before I'm being lazy. You're right. They are unidentified aerial vehicles or, or that gives us UAB. That's not particularly useful. But, you know, we don't know what these are. Unidentified aerial phenomenon.

Phenomenon, right, UAP, where we are. So these different objects that are flying, like it doesn't make a huge amount of sense. I mean, I have read reports that there have been motors seen on the original spy balloon, which gave it some kind of control that, you know, if you are flying over suspicious sites in Montana, you know, it does lend itself to that kind of activity. But, you know, the kinds of, we're still going to learn a lot more. I think once these devices are collected, we can actually see what sensors were on them and what data they may have been collecting.

But so far, the first one at least, they believe it was collecting signals intelligence. And signals intelligence, you know, I'm assuming your audience is familiar with it, but just in case, it's any information that goes through the global information infrastructure. So any kind of digital file on your computer,

text message, email, all that kind of stuff, right? So it potentially has the capacity to collect that. But this is where, like, again, I'm just kind of scratching my head because I'm like, look, China has one of the most successful and robust cyber espionage operations on the planet. You know, and, you know, I'm not saying the U.S. or Canada or whatever doesn't do that. I mean, obviously we all do. So, you know, this is just the way the system works.

But they also have, you know, a very good human intelligence network. And they have a spy satellite program. So what is it that you're getting from these balloons, a very overt means of collection? that you're not getting from these other three robust programs that you have. So again, that's what I don't understand is what are you, are you just trying to see if you can operate a some kind of spy collection in near space in case there's some kind of conflict and you're having trouble with your other kinds of means of collections.

Is that what you're up to? Other than that, it just doesn't make a lot of sense, I think, from a collection standpoint. So actually to not joke for a second, what if you're a country, we know the first one is China, but what if you're a country that can't afford satellites or can't launch them on your own, but you want this kind of intelligence? You know, some things could be out there that we just simply weren't looking for. And let's say, you know, your North Korea or some country even, well, you're not going to get poorer. but do you think that that's something that, you know, does that make more sense? Again, I think it makes more sense for a country that doesn't have the vast capabilities that China has, right? And that's something.

So, again, I think we should keep an open mind as to these other balloons and where they're from and that kind of thing. We do know the first one is from China. We don't know what's going on with these other ones. And so I think we should be careful about it. I don't know if North Korea has a balloon capability. It might make more sense for them to have something like that in terms of it's not clear to me what kind of intelligent sharing they would have with the Chinese. It's possible the Chinese would provide them with information about where various things are.

But again, even like Google Maps, you know, that's like really good. Like, does North Korea need to go through all this? or can they like just like use Google Maps, right? Like can they just gather on the information in open source? I mean, if anything we've learned actually from the conflict in Russia and Ukraine is just the value of open source here. So again, like I just don't understand the pitch, but, you know, maybe I'm just not good at thinking outside the box. I think we should. I think we should also not rule out the possibility that it is exactly what the first one, at least is exactly what China's.

said it was, that it was like a weather balloon that drifted and got, you know, got caught up in a jet stream and ended up over America. I think that that's not, we know that those programs exist, that people do float weather balloons, China flits, weather balloons, everyone flits, weather balloons, and that balloons are hard to control at high altitudes and they get away from you. Like, I think that that is a reasonable possibility, right? I would agree with that. And actually, that's what my first, for the first week, that was actually my assumption, right, was that this was probably, I mean, because it's so bold to end up a balloon like that over, that everyone can see over the United States. And so I thought, okay. And, you know, one of the things I think that

we forget is like, coincidences do happen. Like, and authoritarian states make mistakes. We always attribute absolutely everything we do to some kind of nefarious scheme or purpose. And that's a big mistake. Authoritarian regimes do screw up sometimes. But like I said in the beginning, even if it is a weather balloon, it doesn't preclude intelligence gathering capabilities, right? And I think that's an important thing. You don't see that. So, and if it was a weather balloon that had gone astray, they probably should have notified the United States that, hey, this thing is entering into your territory. Please don't freak out and shoot it down with an F-22. But that's not what And I mean, we can have a whole other conversation here. And I think it's actually really important about communication during this whole instance between the United States and China, which has been very poor and that's extremely concerning. But yeah, I don't think that, that I don't think we should preclude that this is indeed a weather balloon. We're going to learn more when this comes out. But yeah, it's just like, again, it's just a lot of head scratching. And what we shouldn't, we shouldn't forget that authoritarian powers make mistakes.

to. Actually, can we talk about that that communication breakdown? Because that's almost, I'm almost more interested in that. I think there's a lot of things going on with this, with the balloon story and with the UAP story that tell us a lot about what's going on to the Pentagon and with international relations right now. And the fact that this happens, it's something, and it's something that we've known China has been doing for a while, right? There was at least three that we know of during the Trump administration or three that they fessed up to. I'm going to guess that we have similar projects also going above mainland China, although I don't know, but we can talk about the Pentagon's balloon programs because there are quite a few. We use them in Afghanistan and prosecuted a war criminal with them.

we'll get into that in a second. But this thing happens. It gets shut down, right as Blinken is about to go over to Beijing and have talks, they use this as a pretext to cancel those talks. China comes out with a statement that's like, well, we didn't, Blinken was never coming anyway. So, you know, nothing was actually canceled. It's a very strange statement.

Why, like, what do you make of the communication breakdown here and how it kind of speaks to, China and America relations more writ large at the moment because it feels bad. Yeah, no, I think that's it bad is really kind of the bottom line up front, right? And I think you're right. I think this is actually where the main story here lies. I'm not worried about the balloon. I'm worried that during a potential misunderstanding of a military nature, there doesn't seem

to have been great communication between the United States and China. And I think that's kind of what scares me about this in the sense that the fact was during the Cold War. One of the first agreements between the United States and the Soviet Union was a hotline agreement that, you know, there had been enough nuclear scares that everyone sat down and realized, okay, we need the leaders to communicate in a crisis to de-escalate and prevent nuclear war from breaking out in a crisis, right? So we're going to have this hotline agreement where both sides will agree to talk to each other in an event of these kinds of crises. We don't have, at least to my knowledge, such an agreement with the Chinese, right? And this isn't the first time where there's tensions between the two countries and there's no communication whatsoever. The reporting is that, and I mean, I'm sure this is coming from Pentagon sources. So, you know, like, let's keep that in mind that they

did try to call their Chinese counterparts and they're just simply not picking up the phone. And that concerns me because, like, in this case, okay, it's a balloon and maybe it's a little. a little bit embarrassing. And, you know, as you say, China's now saying all these kinds of things, like, oh, Lincoln wasn't coming or that they're saying that, oh, the U.S. has 10 balloons over China right now, which actually might be a thing, as you're going to point out. But the fact is that we need to communicate in these kind of crises, because if we can't do that with a balloon, what's going to happen when the situation is far more tense and far more. serious. And, you know, if I was in charge of diplomacy and no one should put me in charge of

anything, frankly, but, you know, I mean, I think one of the diplomatic priorities that are coming out of this crisis is going to be setting up some kind of arrangement that in a crisis, that there can be communications between the two sides. Because that's the way we're going to handle mismanagement. And as we're getting more and more tension over Taiwan, over the South China seas, as, you know, China's maybe feeling a bit surrounded because of, you know, of the Ocas deal or the quad deal, which are, you know, various U.S. alliances that are kind of building up in the Indo-Pacific. This is going to be really important going forward. We'll take a quick break and be right back. I'm Jason Fields. And we're back with more of

your favorite show, Angry Planet. The other, another aspect of this that I think is really interesting is, and this is something I noticed after the Biden administration started. You kind of go through these, the public facing communications of the Pentagon has different flavors in every administration. And I would say that the Biden's Pentagon has been very press savvy in a way that I don't feel like I've seen since the first Bush administration, second Bush. They proactively called this press conference on Thursday night when they were, when they were. were tracking this thing. They brought all of the press in. They probably could have just ignored this thing and not said anything and maybe it would have been, it would have been on social media people, would have been talking about it. The Pentagon could have put out a press release about it

or whatever, which happened, by the way, in 2019 when there was one of these above Hawaii. So, like, this has happened repeatedly before, but that's not what they did. They brought all the journalists in on a Thursday night late and had like an hour-long press conference where they sat them out and said, we're tracking this thing. We think it's Chinese. Don't worry everybody. We can't blow it up now because there's too much debris, but we are going to watch this. And every step of the way, they were in contact with the press, in kind of in control of the story. And I think that's very interesting, too. I'm just throwing that out there. I don't know if anyone has a response. I agree with you completely. If this has happened before, and it's not talked,

about or if the Pentagon doesn't immediately acknowledge it as a threat or call it a threat, doesn't that mean people wouldn't have reacted like this at all? And Stephanie pointed out, I think something so important, which is the reaction was massive, massive. We don't shoot things down with sidewinder missiles very often. I mean, not only are they expensive. I mean, it's just not something you do. I mean, the F-22's first air-to-air kill, I think.

Yes. I mean, it's just incredible. I believe one of the Air Force generals said, Air Force General said a kill is a kill. Oh, Air Force. Good for you. Yeah, it just seems that is the heaviest hand you could possibly have. You know, I just, yeah, if F-22 versus balloon. The other aspect of this I'll bring in, I think the other thing that,

one of the other reasons they did this is that they, while they're playing for the public, the Pentagon has also gotten really good at playing for Congress, who is their other audience, which is an extremely wild body at the moment, as anyone that's following US domestic politics will know. And I say this because this fucking UFO thing. the alien stuff, people, especially Congress, are watching the skies right now. There is a fascination in the culture and in America's legislative body with the skies. For anyone that kind of doesn't know what's going on there, I'll run down it really quickly. Essentially, like, highly credible witnesses that work for the Navy, Navy pilots, other military personnel started coming forward and doing

things like going on the Joe Rogan podcast to talk about the UFOs, whereas the DoD calls them UAPs that they've seen. This caused, this caused like Marco Rubio in particular to freak out and demand answers from the Pentagon. The Pentagon creates this new thing called the All-Domain Anomily Resolution Office, which is like an X-Files type organization within the Pentagon that is going to investigate weird stuff in the skies. They start now every six months or so,

there's a news cycle around them issuing a report saying like, okay, we've got 300 sightings in the last five years that we can't explain of strange things in the sky that are fairly credible. This is kind of what they look like. By the way, the most recent report,

something like 163 of them were balloon-like objects. Just throwing that out there. And every time this kind of comes into the news cycle, there's people, people talk about aliens, right? But I think it's much more... My suggestion is that these things are probably not aliens, but are in fact various kinds of balloons or drones

from spies, essentially, from near-peer competitors that have gotten into the United States. And the Pentagon enjoys flirting with the idea that they are aliens because it makes us not talk about how they're spies in the sky until now. They've taken control of the story in a way that makes it very clear that this stuff is probably spycraft and they're willing to blow it up. And I think that's a weird, interesting change in the context of everything else they've been doing

in the last couple years. I just think that's so interesting in terms of kind of maybe the American or North American psyche with regards to security and stuff like that. I mean, I think in Canada, I mean, yeah, we have the alien rumors and stuff like that here, too. I don't think we actively published. I mean, I'm going to be honestly, actually, like, I think like two years ago, there was one reporter who just kept coming to me with stuff about alien stuff that the Canadian pilots had seen and unidentified objects and things like that and asked me to comment. I'm like, I am not commenting on this because I am not adding the X files to my research agenda. I think, you know, what's interesting to me is that, like, we are in North America

protected by oceans, right? In Canada, we really just have one border. We technically now have a border with Denmark over Hans Island, which could be a whole other episode, but for the purpose of this conversation are really only borders with the United States. Like, we have perfect security, right? And I think in some ways, Americans have always demanded perfect security, right? Like to annihilate any potential threats and do so in a way that, you know, is still consistent with values, et cetera, et cetera, which is always a different kind of tension. But I think this is part of the freak out, right, is that we always have expected perfect security in our, in our lives, in our skies and things like that, which makes us very different from other

parts of regions of the world like Europe, like, you know, Asia and things like that, where there's been like kind of these wars, these large wars, these large conflicts. And so I think this is partially explained to the shock that we're just not used to this idea that other nations, you know, even if they have cyber, even if they have like satellites on these other kind of things, the idea that they would actually send something over into our space. You know, violating our sovereignty is just so foreign that it is, I think, a real shock to the system. and I don't know, I guess it's prompting different, you know, U.S. servicemen to go on or women to go on these podcasts and talk about all the UFOs they've seen. But I think this is why there's just been such this kind of visceral reaction in both countries to these balloons. And as you say, if as a result of NORAD, NORAD is now saying it's opening its lens, it's going to be looking at more objects. So if there's going to be more objects that are spotted, if some of these UFOs are debunked as, you know, the spy equipment of other countries, I think that's going to have a really interesting impact.

I think on our understanding of security or at least perception of security going forward. And that might change some of our ideas about, you know, what is actually needed for our own defense. Well, we're going to run out of sidewinders. So I have a question that's totally to me related to this. In your piece that you wrote for Newsweek, Stephanie, you mentioned a Gingrich tweet, which was just, you know, espousing the EMP theory, right? And I was just wondering if that also is just part of the whole, you know, fear of losing perfect security. What do you think? So I just love, I mean, we can see each other as we're recording this.

I just like the fact that Mac just like did like this eye roll face palm when you heard EMP. And I have very much the same reaction every time we hear it. There just seems to be this market for EMP paranoia and fear that people just think that this EMP is going to be the weapon that eventually takes out North America. And I mean, it doesn't make any sense. Like why he would use an EMP? as someone, you know, once pointing out to me, EMP, you get a free one with every nuclear explosion. You know, I mean, that's kind of,

and if you're in a nuclear explosion, like the loss of power is like the last thing you're really going to be worried about. So, I don't, yeah, this EMP thing, I think it's along the same lines, right? And seeing, you know, I think they remade Red Dawn a few years ago, right? And it was an EMP that kind of took out North America and, or at least the United States, and made it vulnerable to North Korea. invasion because, of course, it did.

You'll notice in that Newt Gingrich tweet that he explicitly, like, calls people to buy a book from one of his co-author, like, one of the people that he writes books with, which I think is tough. There's a lot of self-published EMP books out there. In a different lifetime, I would have loved to have sat down, read them all, and done an analysis of what this is. But I think it speaks to this larger, as you say, this kind of larger fear of not having perfect security, that there are these kind of perfect super weapons that will be able to take out America. And wouldn't it be ironic if it was on a balloon, the finest technology of the 19th century? So it's, but I mean, of course, like, I mean, it's just so bizarre because, like, the idea that, like, I mean, the kind of resources you need to get an EMP, say, across the Pacific and then detonate properly. it seems a little bit beyond the capacity of a balloon to do that.

So, yeah, I know. And then you had people talking about bio-weapons and you had people talking about all these other kinds of things. And it just, yeah, I mean, there really is this kind of market for this idea of this kind of perfect weapon that will one day take out America. And, you know, a lot of those weapons actually already exist. I don't think we have to go too far into making them. up. I think this is something that we can, you know, there's, there's a lot out there that's already pretty deadly. You also have talked about some other more genuine threats, you know, in this piece. And I just was wondering if you want to talk about just a little bit of maybe about cyber and tell us a

little bit. Again, this is something I think people have forgotten. The Office of Personnel Management Breach where some 22 million people's records were revealed. I mean, something like that. I mean, that's a bigger threat, right? Oh, it's an unmistakably bigger threat. It is a devastating threat, right? I mean, that particular cyber incident, right, attributed to China, had the record that every single government employee,

anyone who'd ever applied for clearance and their friends and family, right? Just the sheer number of people that were in that database is unprecedented. And if you think of all the other kinds of similar attacks, maybe less high profile, but like gathering information on who's staying in what hotel near Washington, D.C. And other kinds of large databases, I think, you know, China can put these things together, right? And they can create profiles and they can identify who the actual intelligence assets of the United States are or who in an embassy is actually a spy. And these are, this is devastating. I mean, there's been a lot of reports done on how U.S. assets in China were systematically eliminated, right, over, over a short period of time. And I think the United States is still trying to reconstruct exactly just how that was done.

But, I mean, certainly cyber attacks like this are far more damaging to U.S. national interests. And not just, I mean, the Office of Personal Management, I use that because just involved the, you know, we think everyone's freaking out worrying that a spy balloon is watching them for some reason. No, but, I mean, but there's these programs that are gathering these pieces of data and knitting them together in ways that they can develop profiles on people. there's, you know, widespread corporate espionage and not just in terms of gathering information about research and development, but also gathering research on plans for mergers and acquisitions, plans for business dealings and all these kinds of things that have largely sought to kind of undermine economic deals, for example, or to outbid or out-compete them where it's believed to

kind of serve Chinese national interests, right? The, the geoeconomic strategies of the United of China have very much depended on these cyber intrusions that they've been able to successfully conduct over time. And these are the kinds of things that really worry me, but, you know, they're not floating in the sky. So people don't see them. They go, oh, yeah, hacked again. And they just go on with their lives because there's no immediate consequence to them. But, you know, the real consequences felt, you know, five, ten, twenty years down the road. when, you know, you do have the kind of either economic damage or, you know, you find that kind of maybe your spy network has been eliminated in the country that you're using.

It's interesting to me that, you know, mentioned corporate espionage. I think people in this country, I was talking to a crazy person yesterday who happens to be a very close friend. And he, you know, had some interesting ideas. But he did talk about the fact that, you know, China, the government and corporations have this relationship. That's not like what we have in the United States. I mean, and to think that they're separate is to make a huge mistake, right? I mean.

Yeah, that's exactly right. So one of the key issues that I think we're seeing in the West generally is the issue with state-owned enterprises, right? I mean, there's really kind of two angles. So first of all, there's the state-owned enterprises. Now, a lot of countries do have some kind of state-owned enterprise. For example, in Canada, we have very large territory, very small population. So we have Canada Post, which is like our U.S. Postal Service, which is basically what we call a Crown Corporation.

It's kind of a government, arms-link government agency that was set up in order to run mail in this country because it was never going to be profitable in order to do so, right? And so that's an example of a kind of government-controlled agency. But again, it's arm's length. It is responsible to the government, but it's not full on every day controlled by the government. It doesn't always do the government's bidding. Whereas in China, for example, a lot of these companies may be directed to invest in certain areas in order to buy up R&D. For example, research and development, we want to gain expertise in a certain area.

so we want to buy up, you know, companies that are working on renewables or companies that are working on solar panels and things like this because, yeah, we're spending millions of dollars to buy the company, but the intellectual property we're getting is worth billions. So that's one example. And again, and that's not illegal, right? Like, that's the challenge. Like, that's not an illegal thing. It's a bit of a gray tactic, but it's not an illegal thing.

And I think companies, you know, what we've seen are countries increasingly using, you know, their legislation to restrict certain investments that they believe would ultimately harm their their national interests. And then you have also a certain set of national security laws that were passed in the last five years by the Chinese government, which essentially require any Chinese company or any company, I believe, operating in China to support the Chinese government in its goals should it be asked to. And this has played a major role in the debate over companies like Huawei, for example, the Chinese telecommunications company that, you know, in places like Europe in places like Canada, you know, I think the U.S. was pretty quick to jump on Huawei. But the fact

is that, you know, if it was ever requested by the Chinese government, would Huawei actually give, you know, say, information to the government of China, would have shut down communications? And as we're moving into an era of 5G and where 5G becomes part of our critical infrastructure, is that a risk that we're willing to tolerate? So, yeah, I know, I think this is part of it, right? That, you know, one of the, again, the biggest challenges are the ones we don't really see. And in the case of Chinese companies, they're not even illegal necessarily, right? You know, the Chinese can come out and say, look, we're just doing what you guys do.

We're just better at it than you are. But the Chinese, you know, but, you know, the issue with Chinese state-owned enterprises in particular is that they're not necessarily efficient. They actually, you know, one of the big issues here, and again, I'm sorry to use Canadian examples, but we've allowed a lot more Chinese foreign investment into Canada than I think the United States has. And now we're having conversations about whether that was a good idea. But, you know, we had an oil company that was bought by CNOC, the Chinese National Oil Overseas Corporation and has not run the company well at all. And there's been layoffs and there's been challenges with that company ever since. These companies are not necessarily good, efficient or good. And if anything, rather than becoming more efficient over time, they're actually becoming larger and more cumbersome. And the ultimate concern, I think, at least in smaller countries, like in Europe and in Canada, that if a large state-owned enterprise comes to Canada

or even a large private Chinese company like Huawei can come to Canada, because they have the support of the state, that they ultimately can undercut all competition until they ultimately control a particular sector and undermine all possible competition, giving them a de facto monopoly over a potentially strategic area. So again, it's hard because not all this is illegal, but it is a real economic national security, I think is going to be the big challenge of the 21st century. Sorry, that was a very long answer. It's a great answer.

It's something I'm really interested in. No, no, no. I actually, I would just say, though, if you're doing all of that, I'm too, might go, hey, look, a balloon. Or the another, let me ask you this kind of picking up that thread about specifically American anxieties around Chinese companies. What do you make of TikTok? I'm not on it. I encourage my students not to be on it. Look, on the one hand, I don't think it's good, right?

I don't think it's good. I do worry that, you know, you can get access, you know, it provides access to a large amount of data about the U.S. population to a government that, you know, is not always, you know, we describe as an adversary. I think that's, that's a bad thing in and of itself. But, I mean, I think this is, this is the, let me, let me use the Huawei example as a reason why I think we have to be careful about the TikTok conversation. Because with Huawei, when it came to this big discussion about banning Huawei and Canada, everyone thinks, okay, we're going to ban Huawei. We're going to be safe.

Right. We're going to make Canada safer. Well, no, it's not true at all because, like, all the other telecommunications companies have giant holes in their cybersecurity that are being exploited. I always say, like, you know, China doesn't need Huawei to get into spy on, you know, United States or Canada or any other country. It's doing it right now and it's doing it fairly well. And I think this is also the case with TikTok, right? Like, I mean, if we ban TikTok or if we force a divester or whatever it is, I think that it's not going to solve the problem because a lot of companies are willing to sell data. You know, a lot of these social media companies are out there selling the personal information of Americans and Canadians and anyone else who's using their platforms and trying to just get that information that way too.

So it's not enough just to plug, you know, I feel like, you know, there's like many different leaks in the dam and we're kind of trying to poke our fingers in trying to stop all the leaks. But we focus on these one things when it's really much broader threat that we should be having in terms of privacy data and things like that. And that's what's actually going to protect Americans, Canadians and things like that. If we can get that straight, just banning TikTok in and of itself isn't going to solve the problem, even if I do have my reservations about letting, letting. trying to have it. If nothing else, IQ points would go up if people stopped using TikTok. I don't know if that's true. I don't know if that's true.

I'm not through that aspect may be a moral panic. I mean, I'm on Instagram. I'm using Instagram just to see the TikToks I'm missing. Right. That's what I use. I mean, I would love to be on TikTok. I mean, I miss Vine. If everyone remembers Vine, Vine is amazing.

And they killed Vine, bring back Vine, Elon Musk. And if you do one thing, bring back mine. But yeah, I mean, it's, you can see why people use it, right? It's fun. It's now the dominant kind of social media platform. And it's changing the way people communicate. Yeah, absolutely. I think I'm just not smart enough to use it.

Let's be honest. No, you're just old. It's like programming the VCR, you know. I'm still trying to reprogram my VCR. What if we put episodes of fantasy? see Island on TikTok. There we go. In discrete three minute

chunks. It's like, what was that platform that's like quibby? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Quibi. Okay, thanks. Poor dumb quibby.

Such a terrible idea. So, Matthew, do you have anything else? Yeah, let me, let me run through America's balloon programs real quick. Just because I teased it earlier and then we'll get out of here. So another thing that happened in 2019 that was pretty interesting. People started seeing strange objects in the sky above Montana. DARPA came out and was like, hey, those are ours.

Don't worry about it. We're just working on high altitude balloons. There's that little data point. Also, I mean, we've looked at using high altitude balloons repeatedly, especially in the 50s and 60s. and the like the EMP stuff is crazy but like bio weapons like there's there's old

DOD plans to use balloon delivery to like drop crop killer basically above countries and they tested it and it worked they never deployed it they shelved that thing but it's something that the

Pentagon looked at probably the most famous use of American balloons or low altitude or maybe the most recent. And there's surveillance equipment. They look like derogables. They look like the Goodyear blimp a little bit smaller. And they're tethered.

So they don't free float because balloons as they get higher at altitude are a pain in the ass to control. But yeah, you basically float a balloon at low altitude like sub a thousand feet and have it, you know, watch Kabul or Afghanistan. or increasingly the U.S. southern border. There's something like 15 of these things, I think, along the U.S. southern border. Department of Homeland Security loves them. The footage from one of these became instrumental in prosecuting a criminal case against Robert Bales, who was a soldier in Kabul that killed, I think he's convicted of killing 16 Afghan civilians. And they got it. They used the balloon surveillance to capture him and prosecute the crime.

So like this stuff is real. Like we are using it. It gets dicey when you get up into the high altitudes though. So just wanted to put that context on the whole thing before we, before we get out of here. I mean, that doesn't surprise me the idea that the Pentagon would use balloons in some ways. and China's claim that there's now 10 balloons over China right now. I mean, it might be true. It might be real. I don't want to totally discount it because, you know, the Pentagon has a large budget in which to experiment with things.

And who knows, maybe there could be some purpose in the future for balloons, HG wells, you know, get your HG wells on. This is going to be pretty amazing. But I mean, I do agree with your broader point about like, Americans being really good at sublimating their anxiety about security concerns, which I think is absolutely true. I think that is probably, was probably at the heart of the last time we were watching this guys in this country

and real paranoid in like the 50s and 60s. We had just come out of, which also saw a large alien boom. Exactly. No, no, that's exactly what I'm talking about. Because in the 19, during World War II, we had the, there were Jap, Japan was floating balloons filled with explosives into the country. And, you know, I think it killed a Boy Scout troop, I think was the only deaths, got caught up and killed a Boy Scout troop.

And America was literally asking and training civilians to look up at the sky and watch for stuff coming into the country. Like, that was a known program. Well, of course, the next 20 years, the 50s and the 60s, you have a giant panic around weird stuff in the sky. around UFOs that gets kind of sublimated into a threat about aliens, right? Like, it makes, it makes perfect sense. And I think a similar thing is going on right now. That's all I got. Thank you, Matthew Galt.

All right. Stephanie Carvin, you have been wonderful, and I hope you'll come back on the show. Any time, whether to talk about 1970s television, aliens, paranoia, or Chinese espionage. It sounds like I've really enjoyed this conversation, and I'm so tough that you invited me. So thank you again, and we'll talk to you soon. Cheers, A.

Thanks for listening to another episode of AngryPra. The show is produced with love by Matthew Galt and Jason Fields with the assistance of Kevin Nogh. This is the place where we ask me for money. If you subscribe to us on substack.angriplanet.com, it means the world to us. The show, which we've been doing for more than seven years now, means the world to us, and we hope it means a lot to you. We're incredibly grateful to our subscribers. Please feel free to ask us questions, suggest show ideas, or just say hi.

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