Xi Jinping has made a “deep mistake” in underestimating the impact of the storm sparked by China’s suspected spy balloon missions, an ex-MI6 chief said on Tuesday.
Sir Alex Younger, who was head of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service from 2014 to 2020, stressed that “trust is plummeting to zero” between Washington and Beijing.
The alleged balloon espionage operations were a “gross and really visible transgression of the sovereignty of many nations,” he added.
The revelations about them also highlighted the “manifest hypocrisy” of Beijing trumpeting a new global security architecture, which China argues it would defend in the face of what it has sought to portray as “US recklessness”.
Diplomatic tensions between the world’s two most powerful nations are rising, with America shooting down a suspected Chinese spy balloon on February 4.
Sir Alex told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Essentially, the economic relationship is becoming politicised and trust is plummeting to zero.
“This whole balloon conversation just demonstrates..how there is no trust in that relationship now.”
He stressed that Britain and other countries in the West are already under “the full press of Chinese espionage activity, space, cyber, human”.
So he doubts that the high altitude spy operations will be a “gamechanging new technique”.
But he warned: “ It’s a deep mistake by China to underestimate the effect that this is going to have.
“It wasn’t properly thought through.
“It’s really difficult for Xi.”
The Chinese president is proposing a “new security architecture for the world” which Beijing was advocating that it would “safeguard,” he added.
But the ex-spy chief stressed: ““This just flies absolutely in the face of that.
“This is just a gross and really visible transgression of the sovereignty of many nations.
“So, I think the US will probably rightly take the opportunity to point out the manifest hypocrisy that this programme involves.”
He also believes that it is “eminently possible” that US technology may have been used in the spy balloons’ equipment
“If it turns out there is US technology being used within these sensors to spy on the US that will rapidly deepen the tech divergence conversation,” he emphasised.
Earlier, a former RAF chief said China may be using balloons flying over the West for “listening” spy missions.
Air Chief Marshal Sir Michael Graydon said it was “highly likely” that there is espionage equipment in the balloons being deployed by Beijing.
But military experts have been puzzled as to what China has to gain from spying with a balloon rather than using an estimated network of 260 satellites.
The former Chief of the Air Staff told LBC Radio: “That’s been sort of exercising my mind, what they are getting from a balloon that they can’t get from other sources is not clear to me at all, and probably we have enough information available from satellites which they are able to get on to, and frankly using Google and all the rest of it, would give them an awful lot of information.
“I think possibly there’s opportunity to listen in to certain things that they might not be able to do so easily.”
His comments came after the US military said it had recovered critical electronics from the suspected Chinese spy balloon downed by an American fighter jet off South Carolina’s coast on Febuary 4, including key sensors presumably used for intelligence gathering.
“Crews have been able to recover significant debris from the site, including all of the priority sensor and electronics pieces identified as well as large sections of the structure,” the US military’s Northern Command said in a statement.
The Chinese balloon, which Beijing denies was a government spy vessel, spent a week flying over the United States and Canada before President Joe Biden ordered it shot down.
The episode strained ties between Washington and Beijing, leading America’s top diplomat, Antony Blinken, to postpone a trip to China.
It also led to the US military scouring the skies for other objects that were not being captured by radar, leading to an unprecedented three shootdowns in the three days between Friday and Sunday of unidentified flying objects.
The US military and the Biden administration have acknowledged that much about the most recent, unmanned objects remains unknown, including how they stay aloft, who built them and whether they may have been collecting intelligence.
US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin sought to calm Americans on Monday about the risks posed by the unidentified objects.
“I want to reassure Americans that these objects do not present a military threat to anyone on the ground,” he said as he landed in Brussels for a NATO gathering.
“They do, however, present a risk to civil aviation and potentially an intelligence collection threat.”
Rishi Sunak said on Monday that RAF jets were on standby to shoot down any Chinese balloon that targets the UK.
The Prime Minister stressed that Typhoon jets from the Quick Reaction Alert Force are “on 24/7 readiness to police our air space”..
On whether such balloons could be shot down if they enter UK airspace, ex-RAF chief Sir Michael said: “Probably the most likely is let it drift out towards sea and then shoot it down there but I go back to what I said to start with, it would be very useful to find out what’s actually in them before we get too excited.”
He told Nick Ferrari on LBC radio: “To go back to your question, how concerned are we, until we know what’s actually in them they’re an irritation, certainly, and it’s highly likely it’s got some spy equipment on it but it would be very useful, wouldn’t it, to find out what’s in it before we get our knickers to much in the twist on that.”
The US military has said that targeting the latest objects has been more difficult than shooting down the Chinese spy balloon, given the smaller size and the objects’ lack of a traditional radar signature.
In an example of the difficulty, the latest shootdown of an unidentified object on Sunday by an F-16 fighter jet took two sidewinder missiles - after one of them failed to down the target, a US official said.
Mr Austin said the US military has not yet recovered any debris from the three most recent objects shot down, one of which fell off the coast of Alaska in ice and snow. Another shootdown occurred over the Yukon territory in Canada, and the final one over Lake Huron on the US-Canada border,
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Monday that the four aerial objects shot down in recent days were somehow connected, without elaborating.
“Obviously there is some sort of pattern in there, the fact we are seeing this in a significant degree over the past week is a cause for interest and close attention,” he stressed.
China’s foreign ministry said the United States had released more than ten high-altitude balloons since May 2022, which it claimed then illegally flew into its airspace and that of other countries.
“The US needs to make a thorough investigation and give China an explanation on this,” foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin told a regular briefing on Tuesday.
