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Last year, China sent a surveillance balloon over most of the continental United States, including Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, where nuclear weapons are stored. China’s craft surveilled Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha, Nebraska, home of U.S. Strategic Command, in charge of the nation’s nuclear forces. China’s balloon also got a close look at Whiteman Air Force Base, home to the B-2 stealth bomber, capable of delivering nuclear and conventional payloads.

China’s craft was first sighted by a private photographer, picked up by national media, and only then acknowledged by the Biden-Harris administration. The Communist regime claimed the balloon was for “mainly meteorological purposes,” that the craft had “limited self-steering capability,” and that “westerlies” blew it off course. Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, echoed China’s claims.

“Those winds are very high,” Milley told CBS News, “the particular motor on that aircraft can’t go against those winds at that altitude.” Pressed as to whether the aircraft was on a Chinese intelligence mission, Milley said, “I would say it was a spy balloon that we know with high degree of certainty got no intelligence, and didn’t transmit any intelligence back to China.” For a different perspective consider Dr. Marina Miron, a researcher in the War Studies Department at Kings College London.

Dr. Miron earned her PhD at the University of New South Wales, Australian Defence Force Academy. She has advised NATO on counterinsurgency and serves at the Kings College Centre for Military Ethics. As Dr. Miron told the BBC:

The balloon could be controlled by operators on the ground, who could raise or lower the craft to pick up different wind currents. You would want to be able to make it linger over a spot to collect data. This is something you can do with a balloon which you cannot do with a satellite.

The ground operators could be any of the nearly 300,000 Chinese students now in the USA.

Nobody leaves China without approval of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which sends “students” on a mission. For example, Juan Tang, supposedly a cancer researcher at UC Davis, was a member of the CCP and the Liberation Army (PLA) the force that slaughtered peaceful demonstrators at Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Gen. Milley doubtless knew that stateside ground operators could easily download the intel. So in the style of Maj. Kong (Slim Pickens) in Dr. Strangelove, Milley was taking evasive action. That might be expected from the man who compared President Donald Trump to Hitler and Trump’s supporters to brownshirts.

Milley also hinted that he would tip off China in the event of an American attack he thought Trump might be planning. The general actually called Chinese Gen. Li Zuocheng and defended the call as conducting the duties of his office. In effect, Milley appointed himself commander-in-chief, a move not exactly authorized by the Uniform Code of Military Justice or consistent with common sense and basic morality.  As Sir Bedevire (Terry Jones) might say, who is this who is so wise in the ways of history and warfare?

Mark Milley received his commission from the Army ROTC at Princeton, where he majored in political science, and his master’s from Columbia was in international relations. Milley never attended West Point, unlike Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, who as Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe played a major role in taking down Hitler’s National Socialist regime. In 2021, Gen. Milley presided over a humiliating surrender in Afghanistan that made the Taliban the best-armed terrorist force in the world. Yet Gen. Milley boasts more U.S. military medals than Gen. Eisenhower. See here and here, and another comparison comes to mind.

Back in the 1980s, Reagan defense secretary Caspar Weinberger called Polish Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski a “Russian general in a Polish uniform.” If anybody thought Milley was a Chinese general in an American uniform it would be hard to blame them. This bemedaled zampolit needs to be interrogated with extreme prejudice. Start by asking if China’s Communist regime ever did anything with which he disagreed. Find out if, like Joe Biden, Gen. Milley believes that the Chinese Communists are “not bad folks.”

According to the Department of Homeland Security, as of April, 24,376 Chinese nationals were apprehended at the border and March saw a 50 percent increase from 2023 and a 2,000 percent increase from 2021. In addition, “more than 1,000 Chinese nationals have crossed the northern border every month for the past five months.” (Emphasis added)

The balloon operation was surely an intelligence windfall for China. If they want to try something more daring, with the addled Joe Biden still in the White House, the Chinese Communists can boast many pairs of boots on the ground.