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chinese balloon
NBC NORAD Segment Was Essentially an Ad for the Military-Industrial Complex
The message of NBC’s reporting was clear: Russia and China are coming, and we need a robust military to defend ourselves from these threats.
Aug 08, 2023
The “Chinese Spy Balloon” has been an important story for fueling New Cold War animus against China, but it is based on a dubious premise. While the phrase “Chinese Spy Balloon” has been repeated ad nauseam in the U.S. press (FAIR.org, 2/10/23), no publicly available information exists to support that claim (Caitlin’s Newsletter, 2/14/23). While some officials still claim without proof that “we know for sure it was a spy vehicle,” the level of fearmongering from the press was certainly unwarranted. U.S. intelligence agencies had actually tracked the balloon since its launch at Hainan Island (Washington Post, 2/14/23), and after intercepting the balloon with fighter jets, according to the head of NORAD, they quickly “determined it wasn’t a hostile threat” (NBC News, 7/20/23).
Even if the balloon was spying, the Pentagon quickly asserted that there would not be “significant value added over and above what the PRC is likely able to collect through things like satellites in Low Earth Orbit.” Or as the Pentagon spokesperson put it: “Does it pose a significantly enhanced threat on the intelligence side? Our best assessment right now is that it does not.” Another Pentagon official later acknowledged that the balloon “did not collect [intelligence] while it was transiting the United States or flying over the United States.”
Based on weather models, The Washington Post (2/14/23) noted that the most likely cause of the balloon’s unusual course was unexpected wind patterns, raising “the possibility that China didn’t intend to penetrate the American heartland with its airborne surveillance device.”
This hysterical reaction by the U.S. not only had consequences on the global stage, but also had the effect of riling up the U.S. public in anti-China fury.
Despite the lack of any clear threat, the Biden administration blew it out of the sky, along with several other balloons. According to President Joe Biden himself (2/16/23), these latter balloons were all “most likely balloons tied to private companies, recreation, or research institutions studying weather or conducting other scientific research.” This was almost certainly true in at least one case (Guardian, 2/17/23).
This hysterical reaction by the U.S. not only had consequences on the global stage, but also had the effect of riling up the U.S. public in anti-China fury. As a complement to that, it was also used to fuel concern about our ostensibly inferior military systems, giving advocates an opportunity to demand more resources for the war machine. NBC’s recent segment, “Inside NORAD’s Mission to Defend U.S. Airspace” (7/24/23), is a prime example about how to leverage balloon hysteria into boosting the military-industrial complex.
‘Infamous Chinese Balloon’
The factual content of the segment, presented by NBC fixture Lester Holt, is as follows: NBC recounted the Chinese balloon episode, and toured an Alaskan NORAD base. Base personnel’s routine missions include flying air tankers to refuel F22s, so they can intercept other harmless balloons. The technology they have is more than capable of tracking balloons, but NORAD is seeking new technology anyway.
As plain facts, the story hardly comes across as a “story.” However, the stage-managed presentation served a dramatically different purpose. NBC’s framing is structured so that the new technology NORAD is seeking is portrayed as an important part of America’s defense.
For the NBC report, the first Chinese balloon wasn’t a non-event blown out of proportion, but something that “shined a light” on the “strategic importance” of Alaskan military bases “as adversaries like Russia and China demonstrate new capabilities.” NBC didn’t bother including the Pentagon’s admissions that the balloon was not an intelligence threat, or the likelihood that it drifted into U.S. airspace by accident. Instead, it allowed the earlier pervasive assumption that the balloon represented some kind of crisis to justify the rest of the coverage.
This segment can best be compared to an advertisement: Instead of selling shoes, soap, or cars, they’re selling a rapidly expanding budget for the machinery of global empire.
The entire segment also fails to cite any “new capabilities” demonstrated by Russia or China. In fact, if anything, NBC described an even lower intensity than normal: Holt reported that there have actually been fewer Russian planes getting anywhere near U.S. airspace since the Russo-Ukrainian war started. Despite this, Holt asked F16 instructor pilot Maj. Brent Rist, “Is the threat level increasing?” More remarkably, the pilot responded, “I think the threat level is increasing.” If there are fewer Russian planes, then what would the threat be? Nothing was said to support this or follow up, but the key line was delivered unchallenged.
NBC announced that the routine interceptions of other harmless balloons were “critical” missions, citing another balloon interception “just weeks after that infamous Chinese balloon crossed the U.S.” Here, too, NBC decided not to address the actual threat that this balloon posed, so the audience was left to accept on faith that this and similar missions are in fact “critical.”
At one point, Holt asked a radar operations commander whether or not NORAD’s technology was capable of detecting those kinds of balloons. The answer was a resounding yes; the commander explained that the warning systems were set to alert for objects traveling at higher velocity, but operators have since adjusted their warnings to look for other objects.
The segment immediately cut from there to reporting about how NORAD was looking for new technology that could “see over the horizon.” Instead of questioning why NORAD needed new technology, despite the demonstrated lack of threat and the adequate capability of current systems, NBC used the common neutral news segue “this comes as”—a phrase that implies a relationship without having to explain what exactly it is. That slippery language hid the obvious contradiction between the lack of threat and the desire to increase costs.
Selling Shoes, Soap, or Empire
NBC’s report went to great lengths to avoid questioning the most expensive institution in the federal government. Instead, the segment was tailor-made to appeal to the common American reverence for the military. Images of men in uniform looking serious, complex machinery whirring away, suited-up pilots and action shots of soaring jets that could have been from Top Gun, and Lester Holt on a military plane, with distorted audio as he addressed the audience through his radio headset. All of this heightened the idea that the military is exciting, thrilling, and important. The fact that their “critical” job consists of attacking harmless balloons didn’t get in the way of promoting the militaristic American mythos. The message of NBC’s reporting was clear: Russia and China are coming, and we need a robust military to defend ourselves from these threats. The balloon was just a practice run for more threats from Russia and China. The images on screen did the job of reinforcing this message, despite the fact that there was no logical argument about any danger presented to the audience.
But propaganda isn’t about creating a coherent position, but rather about eliciting an emotional response from the audience. This segment can best be compared to an advertisement: Instead of selling shoes, soap, or cars, they’re selling a rapidly expanding budget for the machinery of global empire. Much like the over-reliance on think tanks funded by military contractors (FAIR.org, 6/30/23), this sort of coverage contributes to the overall hawkish character of U.S. corporate media.
All of this relies on the internal assumptions of the New Cold War paradigm, in which the U.S. is facing off against Russia and China in a quest for global dominance. As in the old Cold War, much of the escalation comes from U.S. strategy, but American audiences are kept in the dark about that.
ACTION ALERT: You can send messages to NBC Nightly News at nightly@nbcuni.com (or via Twitter: @NBCNightlyNews). Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.
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US Media 'Spy Balloon' Obsession a Gift to China Hawks
Despite uncertainty about the purpose of the high-altitude balloon shot down by the U.S. military last week, American corporate media "overwhelmingly interpreted the Pentagon's conjecture as fact."
Feb 12, 2023
For over a week, U.S. corporate media have been captivated by a so-called “Chinese spy balloon,” raising the specter of espionage.
NBC News (2/2/23), the Washington Post (2/2/23) and CNN (2/3/23), among countless others, breathlessly cautioned readers that a high-altitude device hovering over the U.S. may have been launched by China in order to collect “sensitive information.” Local news stations (e.g., WDBO, 2/2/23) marveled at its supposed dimensions: “the size of three school buses”! Reuters (2/3/23) waxed fantastical, telling readers that a witness in Montana thought the balloon “might have been a star or UFO.”
While comically sinister, the term “Chinese spy balloon”—which corporate media of all stripes swiftly embraced—is partially accurate, at least regarding the device’s provenance; Chinese officials promptly confirmed that the balloon did, indeed, come from China.
What’s less certain is the balloon’s purpose. A Pentagon official, without evidence, stated in a press briefing (2/2/23) that “clearly the intent of this balloon is for surveillance,” but hedged the claim with the following:
We assess that this balloon has limited additive value from an intelligence collection perspective. But we are taking steps, nevertheless, to protect against foreign intelligence collection of sensitive information.
Soon after, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ website (2/3/23) stated that the balloon “is of a civilian nature, used for scientific research such as meteorology,” according to a Google translation. “The airship,” the ministry continued, “seriously deviated from the scheduled route.”
Parroting Pentagon
Despite this uncertainty, U.S. media overwhelmingly interpreted the Pentagon’s conjecture as fact. The New York Times (2/2/23) reported that “the United States has detected what it says is a Chinese surveillance balloon,” only to call the device “the spy balloon”—without attributive language—within the same article. Similar evolution happened at CNBC, where the description shifted from “suspected Chinese spy balloon” (2/6/23) to simply “Chinese spy balloon” (2/6/23). The Guardian once bothered to place “spy balloon” in quotation marks (2/5/23), but soon abandoned that punctuation (2/6/23).
Given that media had no proof of either explanation, it might stand to reason that outlets would give each possibility—spy balloon vs. weather balloon—equal attention. Yet media were far more interested in lending credence to the U.S.’ official narrative than to that of China.
In coverage following the initial reports, media devoted much more time to speculating on the possibility of espionage than of scientific research. The New York Times (2/3/23), for instance, educated readers about the centuries-long wartime uses of surveillance balloons. Similar pieces ran at The Hill (2/3/23), Reuters (2/2/23) and the Guardian (2/3/23). Curiously, none of these outlets sought to provide an equivalent exploration of the history of weather balloons after the Chinese Foreign Affairs statement, despite the common and well-established use of balloons for meteorological purposes.
Even information that could discredit the “spy balloon” theory was used to bolster it. Citing the Pentagon, outlets almost universally acknowledged that any surveillance capacity of the balloon would be limited. This fact apparently didn’t merit reconsideration of the “spy balloon” theory; instead, it was treated as evidence that China was an espionage amateur. As NPR’s Geoff Brumfiel (2/3/23) stated:
The Pentagon says it believes this spy balloon doesn’t significantly improve China’s ability to gather intelligence with its satellites.
One of Brumfiel’s guests, a U.S. professor of international studies, called the balloon a “floating intelligence failure,” adding that China would only learn, in Brumfiel’s words, at most “a little bit” from the balloon. That this might make it less likely to be a spy balloon and more likely, as China said, a weather balloon did not seem to occur to NPR.
Reuters (2/4/23), meanwhile, called the use of the balloon “a bold but clumsy espionage tactic.” Among its uncritically quoted “security expert” sources: former White House national security adviser and inveterate hawk John Bolton, who scoffed at the balloon for its ostensibly low-tech capabilities.
Minimizing U.S. provocation
The unstated premise of much of this coverage was that the U.S. was minding its own business when China encroached upon it–an attitude hard to square with the U.S.' own history of spying. Perhaps it’s for this reason that media opted not to pay that history much heed.
In one example, CNN (2/4/23) published a retrospective headlined “A Look at China’s History of Spying in the U.S.” The piece conceded that the U.S. had spied on China, but, in line with the headline’s framing, wasn’t too interested in the specifics. Despite CNN‘s lack of curiosity, plenty of documentation of U.S. spying on China and elsewhere exists. Starting in 2010, according to the New York Times (5/20/17), China dismantled CIA espionage operations within the country.
And as FAIR contributor Ari Paul wrote for Counterpunch (2/7/23):
The U.S. sent a naval destroyer past Chinese controlled islands last year (AP, 7/13/22) and the Chinese military confronted a similar U.S. vessel in the same location a year before (AP, 7/12/21). The AP (3/21/22) even embedded two reporters aboard a U.S .“Navy reconnaissance aircraft that flew near Chinese-held outposts in the South China Sea’s Spratly archipelago,” dramatically reporting on Chinese military build up in the area as well as multiple warnings “by Chinese callers” that the Navy plan had “illegally entered what they said was China’s territory and ordered the plane to move away.”
The U.S. military has also invested in its own spy balloon technology. In 2019, the Pentagon was testing “mass surveillance balloons across the U.S.,” as the Guardian (8/2/19) put it. The tests were commissioned by SOUTHCOM, a U.S. military organ that conducts surveillance of Central and South American countries, ostensibly for intercepting drug-trafficking operations. Three years later, Politico (7/5/22) reported that “the Pentagon has spent about $3.8 million on balloon projects, and plans to spend $27.1 million in fiscal year 2023,” adding that the balloons “may help track and deter hypersonic weapons being developed by China and Russia.”
In this climate, it came as no surprise when the U.S. deployed an F-22 fighter jet to shoot down the balloon off the Atlantic coast (Reuters, 2/4/23). Soon after, media were abuzz with news of China’s “threat[ening]” and “confrontational” reaction (AP, 2/5/23; Bloomberg, 2/5/23), casting China as the chief aggressor.
Perpetuating Cold War hostilities
Since news of the balloon broke, U.S. animus toward China, already at historic highs, has climbed even further.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken postponed a trip to China. President Biden made a thinly veiled reference to the balloon as a national security breach in his February 7 State of the Union address, declaring, “If China threatens our sovereignty, we will act to protect our country.” Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, Democratic ranking member of the newly formed House Select Committee on China, asserted that “the threat is real from the Chinese Communist Party.”
Rather than questioning this saber-rattling, U.S. media have dispensed panicked spin-offs of the original story (Politico, 2/5/23; Washington Post, 2/7/23; New York Times, 2/8/23), ensuring that the balloon saga, no matter how much diplomatic decay ensues, lasts as long as possible.
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