Spy balloons and the next great game 

Last week, millions of Americans watched a massive Chinese surveillance balloon float leisurely above their homes before a sidewinder missile from a U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor brought it down off the coast of South Carolina. This was the first time a foreign aircraft has been destroyed in U.S. airspace since World War II.

By Feb. 7, the Washington Post reported that U.S. officials had uncovered a vast, multi-year surveillance program run by the People’s Liberation Army in the skies above five continents. Despite the seriousness of these developments, the situation in the United States generated as much satire as sober commentary. 

One former U.S. intelligence official laughed it off, telling CNN’s Fareed Zakaria that on a scale of significance, he gives the incident a two out of 10. Feeding into this dismissive attitude was one of the first justifications Beijing provided, which described the balloon as a “civilian” airship used for “scientific research” that blew off course unexpectedly.

Even after U.S. defense officials clarified that the device was a maneuverable surveillance tool, this narrative developed a life of its own on the internet, appearing prominently in widely-shared Global Times cartoons and countless online comment forums. Beijing has since used similar language to explain the presence of another of its airships identified above South America, implying that rogue winds managed to commandeer two of its balloons on separate continents in a 24-hour period. 

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) relies on western ignorance of its governing systems as a crutch to keep these justifications standing. It is important, then, to highlight China’s policy of military-civil fusion, or MCF. According to the U.S. Department of State, MCF seeks to eliminate “barriers between China’s civilian research and commercial sectors, and its military and defense industrial sectors.”

Unlike the United States and other free nations, lines drawn between public and private property – intellectual or otherwise – are less concrete in the People’s Republic of China. Private Chinese companies behind the technology used in these balloons are purportedly involved in the military-civil fusion effort. 

Although some analysts have pointed out that MCF is not consummate in its implementation, the CCP is notorious for its military control of China’s airspace. This means the term “civilian surveillance balloon” is somewhat of an oxymoron. Even if these claims were true, when a private company collects foreign information of military value, that information is subject to various means of party acquisition. A transcontinental balloon weighted down with sensors the size of school buses and flown over at least half a dozen sensitive sites in the United States has significant military value. 

Congressional testimony from leading China experts such as M. Taylor Fravel and Elizabeth Economy has helped inform policymakers of the threat posed by MCF as a policy. Indeed, last year Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations a bill entitled the “Preventing PLA Acquisition of United States Technology Act of 2022.” The purpose of the bill is “to counter the military-civil fusion strategy of the Chinese Communist Party and prevent United States contributions to the development of dual-use technology in China.”  

The MCF concept might seem intrusive, but this melding of public and private interests is not a historical anomaly. Some have likened competition between the United States and China to the era Rudyard Kipling coined “the great game” in his 1901 novel, “Kim.” This period of dueling European empires in the 18th and 19th centuries is a useful framework for demonstrating the enduring relationship between the civilian and the authoritarian state.

In this game – chronicled most notably by Peter Hopkirk – Central Asia became a hub for imperial spies, intelligence collectors and cartographers hoping to discover the key to a higher form of knowledge they could use as leverage over competing imperial powers. 

The British Empire’s East India Company, for instance, was a “private” organization with a vast intelligence network spread throughout Central Asia by the end of the 18th century. The company’s officers fed information to London from around the globe, and not simply that of a military nature. Much of the information the company gathered was cartographic, botanical, anthropological or economic. But it worked to strengthen the empire’s political and military standing, all while operating under the guise of a militarily benign trading company. Today, it is hard to overlook similarities in China’s global aspirations. 

A key lesson of the original great game concerns flaws in British approaches to Central Asian cultures and social dynamics. London officials eventually deprioritized supposedly outdated human intelligence techniques in favor of new tools that exploited the statistical movement. Subtleties related to tribal disputes and social factions on the Indian subcontinent were replaced with economic metadata and sweeping generalities. The result included everything from the unexpected Indian rebellion of 1857 to the British Empire’s two disastrous incursions into Afghanistan between 1839 and 1880. 

These flaws of cultural parochialism endure, which is why China’s leaders quell fears by describing their balloons as harmless civilian weather instruments. This is a far cry from the truth. 

Although satellites are useful for surveillance, they are not a panacea, and balloons can carry and deliver things that satellites cannot. According to Air Force Gen. Glen VanHerck, commander of U.S. Northern Command and NORAD, one reason the military did not destroy the airship sooner was because they suspected it may have had explosives on board. 

In sum, the world should expect to see more of this, and not just with balloons but also with other tools operating under the auspices of civilian ownership in the spirit of the East India Company. Beijing is playing the game by relying on western mirror imaging to keep their dubious narratives afloat and pacify the world into apathy. An awareness campaign focused on military-civil fusion’s role in supporting China’s political objectives could let some air out of its red balloons and give Washington a stronger hand in this infinite game. 

Capt. Michael P. Ferguson is a U.S. Army officer with 20 years of combat, staff and security cooperation experience on four continents. He is the author of dozens of publications and co-author of a forthcoming military history of Alexander the Great. 

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone, and do not reflect the policies or positions of the U.S. Army, U.S. Department of Defense, or U.S. government.