Pop! The China Trial Balloon
If you were a megalomaniacal dictator who wants death to America—there are quite a few out there that match that description—then a biological weapon wouldn’t do the trick. The problem with a biological weapon is that they have a nasty way of blowing back on you, as both sides in World War I found out with their mustard gas attacks. Unless you have stockpiled enough vaccines or other medicines to protect your own citizenry, then you would be committing suicide.
Annihilation from nuclear arms have always been a threat since the late 1940s. Those of us who grew up in the 1950s and 60s remember the drills at school which were really meant to make us feel far safer than we really were—kind of like the masks during the Fauci covidiocy party. As children of that era, there came a realization that MAD—Mutually Assured Destruction—between the Soviets and Americans ultimately kept us safe, especially after the Cuban Missile Crisis was averted. We still had nightmares, from time-to-time, but the everyday fear of seeing a flash of light preceding the vaporization of our bodies receded.
There are a limited number of countries that have nuclear arms: U.S., U.K., Russia, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea. I assume that if Iran doesn’t have one yet, they are only a turn of a screw here, and a tightening of a bolt there from being operational.
On that list, there are four that we can be fairly certain would not want to nuke us—Biden and his threat of F-16 attacks on MAGA notwithstanding.
Four nuclear powers (five if you count Iran) do not like us very much. Pakistan (Iran if capable) and North Korea do not have a delivery system nor abundant weapons to take the U.S. down enough to escape their own demise so that leaves Russia and China. Russia currently is engaged and doing a bit of nuclear saber rattling but Putin is well aware of the MAD doctrine. They barely have enough of a military to finish off Ukraine and Putin, after being chased by UFOs, has to walk a tightrope to keep NATO from skipping their way into a slaughterhouse, for both sides. Putin is a real bastard but he’s not crazy. (Of course I made the genius prognostication that Putin wouldn’t go into Ukraine.)
No, if you want the giant slayed, you wouldn’t resort to highly destructive means. You want to kill the country but retain the carcass.
As example from an earlier essay, China is going through some internal issues that are hampering their ability to project international power as desired. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) zero-covid policy lockdowns, which curiously ended after widespread organic protests and riots, has weakened their feeling of invincibility over their populace; and, their former one-child policy was a population bomb that left them with a surplus 36 million more males than females. That’s a lot of guys that aren’t getting laid anytime soon and that’s a lot of sexual stress to release onto the streets of Shanghai during a protest.
China also suffered a banking and real estate crash that has wiped out consumer equity and savings, creating yet another wedge between the CCP and the people they govern. Then there are certainly some signs that Chinese President Xi Jinping is in the process of closing China to the rest of the world with one example being the expulsion of foreign management from foreign companies operating in China.
Then we poked a finger in his eye.
The Department of Commerce issued new rules that cutoff China from advanced semiconductors which could be used in military and artificial intelligence applications. Experts claim this is a death knell for China’s semiconductor industry for it will deny the nation’s tech industry further access to American engineering and manufacturing expertise.
And, recently, we’ve been running drills in the South China Sea with two to three carrier groups on a regular basis.
There’s nothing like a good old fashion military adventure to change the narrative at home.
Xi is getting squeezed from all sides. He is a true believer, a Maoist who, when he first came into power, took control of the largest capitalist companies in China. Remember high-flying Jack Ma.
The Chinese also have long memories. Our current fentanyl crisis is being fueled by precursor chemicals from China. They are pushing this agenda with the help of Chinese students here on visas.
"But here's the deal right now, not only the cartels facilitating the distribution of the poison by providing the chemicals, what they're doing is they have the young Chinese students here in America that are meeting with cartels around the country picking up suitcases of cash," [Former Drug Enforcement Agency Special Operations Director Derek Maltz Sr.] asserted. "The cash is getting turned over to Chinese businessmen in America. They're gambling with this money. But most importantly, they're buying real estate... all over our country."
This is payback for the opioid addictions the Western powers forced on the Chinese during the 18th and 19th Century Opium Wars, in which Britain retained control of Hong Kong until 1997. Marching into Hong Kong and removing the last vestiges of British colonialism was step one. Now they’re on to next steps.
The CIA warned recently that Xi instructed his military to be prepared for an attack on Taiwan by 2027 but, realistically, they probably have strengthened their military enough to act before then, especially if a major threat to their goals is taken off the board.
Bad omens lay in front of us: China bought 32 tons of gold in November and another 30 tons in December, bringing their known reserves to 2,100 tons, about the same amount as Russia and just behind France and Italy (the U.S. has over 8,100 tons by comparison). Analysts suggest this is a strategy to insulate China from the U.S. dollar. One thing to keep in mind, the world gold markets usually tighten in the last quarter of each year because of the high demand for gold jewelry during the Chinese New Year; but, not all of these purchases can be written off as that; China has been aggressively increasing their gold reserves over the past five or so years.
Peter Pry, Ph.D. (recently deceased), a preeminent scholar on geopolitical nuclear strategies and national security, warned of China’s ambition at a preemptive strike against the U.S. in an Op/Ed from June 2020. He argued that our kindergartener-like response to the covid pandemic and further unimpressive leadership of our government exposed our weaknesses.
Dating back to the 1990s, China has considered a High-altitude Electromagnetic Pulse (HEMP) attack on the U.S. mainland as the opening move to a Pearl Harbor-style attack. Dr. Pry argued that we need to harden our electrical grid infrastructure against such attacks but he believes that our military and Department of Energy have been stuck in committees for the past ten years and have done little to protect against such attacks.
A ten megaton nuclear device detonated 200 miles above us would knock out North America. Lower yields at lower altitudes would be more precise; just what a weather balloon could do.
We are going to be at our weakest for the next two years. Politically we are a mess; economically as well—the good jobs numbers (believable?) notwithstanding—but, the past two years of Covid bungling began a takedown of America’s small businesses; and, with inflation, middle America can’t make ends meet and are relying on credit cards to finance week-to-week expenses. In two years, Joe Biden and the Democrats have delivered our necks beneath the Chinese guillotine.
If I’m intent on total domination and looking at the present condition of the world (and also the mood of my peasants), I strike while I have a window. If Xi pulled the trigger, China would float two or three balloons into our air space and ignite the EMPs. In coordination, he would launch missiles armed with EMP devices that would take out our Navy within half a day and several missiles over our airspace to finish off the North American grid with HEMP devices. He’d also hit Australia in the same manner.
If you knock down Goliath, the Philistines will scurry away into the wilderness. Europe, defenseless, will capitulate. Russia has probably made their deal and the rest of the world, including India, will fall in line.
Here’s the world you would be dumped into: Your cars won’t start. You won’t be able to recharge your phones, if they survived, but you wouldn’t have to worry, all cell service would be knocked out. The ATM machines would be out so you’d have no access to cash. Credit cards, too, would be kaput. No heating, no A/C, no refrigeration, no household cooking, no water service, no natural gas once the line pressure fell too low; all run on electricity. And certainly no ability to feed yourself unless you have a non-perishable stockpile of food in your pantry.
Wherever there is a concentration of people living together, riots would be ten times worse than in 2020 within a day or two after the loss of electricity and communication. That means dense urban areas, suburbs, and even small towns would descend into the type of hell never before seen in the history of mankind. Most of us would be killed by our fellow citizens within weeks because most of us lack the incivility to defend ourselves. Estimates are that only ten percent of the nation’s population would survive after one year.
The question is not why Biden waited to pop the balloon after crossing the country; the question is: How many balloons have already flown over our airspace and did our military know of them?
That’s been answered in a Washington Post article. DoD officials briefed members of Congress that there have been balloon incursions going back to at least the Trump administration but Trump nor Biden were in the loop—our bureaucratic technocracy at work.
From a Daily Mail article, new questions arise.
An anonymous source [sanctioned CIA leak] told the Washington Post a third balloon is likely operating near the US after the first balloon was discovered hovering over Montana on Thursday and another was found above Latin America on Friday… A source told the Post that the discovery of the balloons was an embarrassment to the Chinese, who are 'freaked' out by the incident. 'They’re in a very tough place,' the source told the outlet. 'And they have very few cards to play right now.'
If the source is correct, then Xi is backed further into a corner. The best way to attack the U.S. is through a balloon with an EMP payload, an innocuous Trojan Horse skipping along the jet stream, harmlessly bobbing along until…
Bang!