Source: United States Senator for Florida Marco Rubio
U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) joined This Week to discuss the Chinese spy balloon. See below for highlights and watch the full interview here.
On message China is sending:
“There’s a symbolic issue at play here. This is not a coincidence that this thing traversed the United States over sensitive military sites leading up to Blinken’s, what was scheduled to be his visit to China. This is deliberate. They did this on purpose. They understood that it was going to be spotted. They knew the US government would have to reveal it to people. And the message they were trying to send is what they believe internally, and that is that the United States is a once great superpower that’s hollowed out and in decline.
“The message they’re trying to send the world is, ‘look, these guys can’t even do anything about a balloon flying over US airspace. How can you possibly count on them if something were to happen in the Indo-Pacific region? If they’re not going to do anything about a balloon over US airspace, how are they going to come to the aid of Taiwan or stand with the Philippines or Japan or India when the Chinese move on their territory?’
“That’s really the key part here, is they knew exactly what they were doing and there was a message behind it.”
On broader nature of Chinese spying threat:
“Obviously countries spy on countries. China has satellites. China, unfortunately, has embedded in our country all kinds of Huawei software and hardware that could potentially be used for espionage. But what was the value of this particular platform? Because it’s one we’ve seen them use now for a handful of years here.
“But I think secondarily to it is really an understanding of what are we going to do about it in the future, because I don’t believe this is the last time we’re going to see this sort of thing happen again. I don’t think this is coincidental. I think they did this on purpose to send a message to the world that they can enter American airspace and do so without us being able to do or willing to do much about it.”
On potential intelligence retrieved from the Chinese spy balloon:
“It depends on what we retrieve. And frankly, it also depends on whether the Chinese sort of suspected that this might happen. They flew this thing across the middle of the United States. So I imagine whoever designed this thing and put it up there realized, ‘hey, at some point the Americans may get their hands on this.’ It’s quite possible that it was designed in such a way where there wouldn’t be much value to us in that regard.
“We’re going to find out more. Those are the kinds of things that obviously will not be discussed publicly, because if they knew what we’d gleaned from it, they’d protect themselves from it in the future. And it also depends on what they’re able to retrieve here. When you shoot something out of the sky and it goes into the ocean, you don’t always get it back in a neat package.”