Beware of US ‘info war’ projects

THE NPR (National Public Radio) is a quasi-autonomous, government-funded nonprofit media outlet created by the U.S. federal government. On February 16, 2023 its headline blared, “Biden says the 3 aerial objects shot down were not Chinese spy balloons…

“President Biden will soon speak with Chinese President Xi Jinping about the surveillance balloon the U.S. military shot down early this month.”

On the February 18, 2023, edition of the NPR, one major headline was “Blinken meets with China’s top diplomat in first meeting since the balloon controversy…

“U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, on Saturday. It is the highest level of contact between the two countries since the ‘discovery’ of a Chinese surveillance balloon over U.S. airspace earlier this month.”

We recall that the “spy balloon” saga started last February 4, 2023, when the first balloon was spotted flying towards Alaska from the Bering Sea, meandering to Canada and back into the U.S. and out the coast of South Carolina where it was shot down.

China insisted it was just a wayward meteorological balloon while a ‘fact-check report by Reuters said the balloon was not even Chinese but from an American company.

I remember writing about that confusion of the first balloon which Reuters has insisted in its report was an American balloon, but the issue got even more confused as other balloons popped out in other related reports; of balloons traversing South America and other parts of the world that all became part of the global hyperventilation of the “balloon mania.

But now, in the middle of February, the White House acknowledge the reports of Chinese spying via air balloons were not, well, ‘Chinese’ at all.

After deflating the spy balloon mania and the cancelled visit of U.S. Secretary Blinken to China, Blinken finally meets China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi in Munich, Germany.

The Munich Security Conference is held annually to assess the state of the E.U. and its trans-Atlantic relations with the U.S. I remember my last articles on Munich Security Conference sometime 2020 when its theme was “Westlessness” – the sense of drift and abandonment of Europe. Europe is even more lost today.

There are lessons to be learned from the “spy balloon” brouhaha, the first being to be very careful about U.S. information war operations which the spy balloon tall tale was.

Thinking people were immediately alerted to the flaws of the story, asking questions such as why would any party, most of all China, which has about 300 satellites, a third of them of military applications, need to use a hot-air balloon—very hard to steer in any direction– for intel operations?

To keen observers the diversionary purpose of the spy balloon story is obvious; however, the question that has yet to be answered is – diversion from what?

The first theory is that it was used as an excuse to scuttle the special Blinken bilateral talks requested by the U.S. with China agreed upon at the 2022 G20 meet in Bali, Indonesia in order to resume critical negotiations on climate change and the drop in US-China relations after US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s provocative visit to Taiwan earlier in the year.

Another theory is that the spy balloon story was floated in anticipation of Seymour Hersh’s exposé of the direct hand of President Joe Biden in the bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines last September 2022 where he directly violated US laws to achieve his purpose—going around the requirement of congressional consultation in covert action, giving direct instructions to executive officials Blinken, Nuland and Sullivan to proceed with the planning of a terrorist act and using the U.S. Navy to get what he wants.

The spy balloon caper did not stop the exposé, which came out on February 8, or four days after the White House media hype about the balloons but it may have diffused the impact of Hersh’s report somewhat.

The whole balloon escapade is a lesson for Filipinos not to believe U.S. media too readily, to be on guard for deception and diversionary intent of U.S. information warfare operations.

Our media in the Philippines is part of the Anglophone media world and infused with U.S. influence operations.

One U.S. concoction in the Philippines is the reportage of ABS-CBN’s Chiara Zambrano in April 2021 claiming she was chased by Chinese Coast Guard at Ayungin shoal. That was a flat out lie.

The story was subsequently exposed by then Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana and presidential adviser Sal Panelo as fake news.

The Pinoy Exposé tabloid of former NPC president Paul Gutierrez exposed it as a ISW (Institute for the Study of War, a U.S. NGO) paid project.

Another is the U.S. Simularity report in 2021 in conjunction with the Albert Del Rosario Institute and Stratbase webinar in 2021 reporting Chinese vessels spewing human sewage in the South China Sea complete with photos– the photos were later exposed by the DND’s Lorenzana as photo from Australia taken in 2014.

The latest U.S. concocted fake news fed through the Philippine “Amboy” channels is the “blinding laser light” controversy. But only a fool can believe that a laser pointed at someone from hundreds of meters away can hit the pupils of a viewer.

And as the Chinese Foreign Ministry pointed out, the greenish ‘laser beam’ was not of “military grade” as claimed by our Philippine Coast Guard—where none had seen or even touch a military grade laser but simply, a ‘speedometer’ used to determine the speed and distance of any vessel.

At any rate, exposés of such fake news have deflated US credibility and the confidence of U.S. “allies” (read: puppets) particularly in the ASEAN.