Former US nationwide safety adviser John Bolton has described China as “the existential threat in the 21st century”, after a suspected spy balloon was shot down over North American airspace earlier this month.
He advised Sky News: “This balloon must be a get up name for folks within the US, Europe and elsewhere who do not assume China is a menace within the twenty first century. In my view, China is the existential menace within the twenty first century.
“To be sure this is a serious matter and it’s indicative of the extraordinarily widespread nature of Chinese surveillance efforts against the US and West as a whole.”
Mr Bolton additionally criticised the Biden administration’s dealing with of the state of affairs and stated the balloon ought to have been shot down earlier.
The US shot down the alleged Chinese spy balloon on 4 February following days of intrigue over the mysterious white plane.
Since then, an additional three unidentified objects have been shot down over North American airspace as relations stay strained between Washington and Beijing.
A US defence official stated the article was a surveillance balloon that China supposed to make use of on delicate navy websites, however Chinese officers declare it was a climate analysis system that blew astray.
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What are spy balloons?
Timeline of unidentified objects shot down
The balloon was shot down by an F-22 fighter plane, about six nautical miles off the coast of South Carolina, close to Myrtle Beach.
In a gathering with the Chinese Communist Party’s most senior overseas coverage official Wang Yi, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned Beijing that sending a “surveillance balloon” over the US was “unacceptable and must never happen again”.
The assembly got here hours after the highest Chinese diplomat took a swipe on the US, accusing it of violating worldwide norms with “hysterical” behaviour by capturing down the balloon.
Source: information.sky.com”