如何看待昨日白宫官员称“习近平及中共军方根本对气球事件不知情”？

https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/10/china/china-balloon-xi-jinping-unaware-intl-hnk/index.html

配合之前逼灯的新闻食用
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/3852011-biden-says-china-spy-balloon-not-a-major-breach/
https://nypost.com/2023/02/09/biden-says-chinese-spy-balloon-wont-damage-us-china-relations/

The US says Xi didn’t know about the balloon. That raises even more questions
Simone McCarthy
Analysis by Simone McCarthy, CNN
Updated 4:28 AM EST, Fri February 10, 2023



Sailors recover a Chinese high-altitude balloon off the coast of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina after it was shot down by US forces on February 5, 2023.
Sailors recover a Chinese high-altitude balloon off the coast of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina after it was shot down by US forces on February 5, 2023.
Petty Officer 1st Class Tyler Thompson/US Navy
Hong Kong
CNN
—
Washington believes the balloon shot down over the Atlantic on Saturday is part of an extensive Chinese surveillance program – but that Xi Jinping, China’s most powerful leader in decades, may not have been aware of the mission.

The assessment was communicated to American lawmakers in briefings Thursday, according to CNN reporting – and if true, could point to what analysts say would be a significant lack of coordination within the Chinese system at a fraught period of China-US relations.

The alternative in this scenario – that Xi was aware that a balloon was being dispatched over the United States ahead of a visit from US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Beijing – would raise a separate set of concerns about China’s decision-making in relation to the US.

It could mean that Xi and his top advisers underestimated the potential gravity of the fallout of the mission and the possibility it could imperil Blinken’s visit, which would have been the first from the most senior US diplomat since 2018 and had been welcomed by Beijing as a path to easing strained ties.

So far, China has offered slim information to fill out its own version of events – maintaining the balloon was a Chinese civilian research airship blown off course and flatly denying a broader surveillance program.

A suspected Chinese spy balloon drifts above the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of the Carolinas before being shot down on February 4, 2023.
China's balloons are part of a strategy to beat the US on a new battlefield: 'near space
Beijing, in a statement last weekend, appeared to link the device to “companies,” rather than the government or military – though in China the prominence of state-owned enterprises and a robust military-industrial complex blurs the line between the two.

However, a senior State Department official said the US believes the balloon was part of a “PRC fleet of balloons developed to conduct surveillance operations” and that these activities are “often undertaken at the direction of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).” The official added that China has “overflown these surveillance balloons over more than 40 countries across five continents” – without providing more detail.

Whether the balloon was civilian or military, its location over the US raises the question of just how closely Xi is aware of potentially sensitive missions being undertaken under his watch within the sprawling, but top-down Chinese system.

If the balloon that traveled over the US is part of what Washington describes as a coordinated and military-affiliated surveillance program, one possibility, according to analysts, is that Xi may have been aware of the program, but not its day-to-day operations.

Such a situation, according to Singapore-based analyst Drew Thompson, could have been exacerbated by the level of control wielded by Xi – who cemented his grip on power last fall as he entered a precedent-breaking third term atop the Communist Party.

“The problem with the centralization of power under Xi Jinping is the lack of delegation of authority to lower levels,” said Thompson, who is a senior research fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore (NUS).

That means that lower-level officials who may have the capacity to more closely monitor such missions may not be empowered to do so, or not be equipped to make political judgments about their impact, he said. Power struggles between lower and higher ranking officials could also complicate communication, he said.

“There is a tension throughout the Chinese system – it’s a feature of Chinese governance, where lower levels fight for their own autonomy, and upper levels fight for greater control,” he said.

Past crises in China have pointed to these tensions, including the outbreaks of both SARS in 2002-2003 and more recently Covid-19, where reporting delays were widely seen as having slowed the response and compounded the problem. Some blamed local officials who feared repercussions, or were accustomed to a system where information flows from the top down, not the bottom up.

Balloon launches could also fall into a gap in which operations were not managed or overseen in the same way as space or other aircraft missions, according to Dali Yang, a political scientist at the University of Chicago.

In this case, entities launching balloons may have received “little or no push back from other countries, including the United States” and “increasingly seen such launches as routine based on weather conditions and at modest costs,” Yang said.

“As a result, while the leaders of these programs have also become emboldened over time to test new routes, it was likely that they didn’t get top priority attention from the perspective of political risk,” he said.

Biden officials expressed the belief that both the senior leadership of the People’s Liberation Army and Chinese Communist Party, including Xi, were also unaware of the balloon mission over the US, and that China is still trying to figure out how this happened, a source familiar with the Thursday briefing to Congress told CNN.

An angled composition of the back of the US Capitol Building in Washington DC. The angle gives a good indication of the immensity of the structure.
Washington forges rare political unity in condemning China over balloon drama
China’s Foreign Ministry appeared caught off-guard by the situation as it publicly unfolded over the past week – releasing its first explanation of the incident more than 12 hours after the Pentagon announced it was tracking a suspected surveillance balloon.

But some observers of elite Chinese politics remain skeptical that Xi would have been unaware of a balloon dispatched to US airspace or that lower-level officials would conduct such a mission that could impact US-China relations without his knowledge.

“Because of his personality, he wants 100% (control),” said Alfred Wu, an associate professor, also at the NUS Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. “I don’t think Xi Jinping allows for that kind of autonomy.”

Instead, Xi may have been comfortable with an incident that diverted the attention of a public frustrated amid a faltering economy after years under the recently dismantled zero-Covid policy – but underestimated the US domestic response that resulted in the postponed talks, Wu said.

Beijing, for its part, has accused the US of “overreacting” in its decision to shoot down the balloon on Saturday.

Meanwhile, Washington may be offering its message that Xi wasn’t aware of the situation as it seeks to “continue the dialogue” started during a meeting between Xi and US President Joe Biden at the G20 summit in Bali, according to Wu.

“They may want to offer (China) some face,” he said.

美国佬要么就是真的蠢 到现在都还搞不懂🕷的脑回路 要么就是这届政府真的就是个卖国政府 
但我只是奇怪 一个世界第一的 经历和对抗过各种共产党、纳粹、军国主义的，已经见识过了全世界的精英政府 真的就蠢到 到现在都还搞不懂低级的农逼🕷在想什么吗😆

间谍气球编队都入侵美国本土了 逼灯先是定义此事件"not a major breach" 不会demage中美关系 紧接着白宫又放话说习包子不知道气球一事？ 意思就是好几只间谍气球组成的舰队是通过自我意识决定飘到美国来的是吧

这帮人完全就是在配合中共 就如同2020年病毒泄露时是完全是一样的情况 
最早右边把事情捅出来 甚至当时直接就说是武汉P4搞的 结果反而被污蔑成阴谋论 还被卖国集团带着全国一起嘲讽 这真不是在帮着中共打掩护？
当年这群人抨击时任政府防疫政策 甚至最早不停阻挠禁飞令的丑态仍然历历在目 当时公共卫生领域是谁在带头？是Fauci啊 这个武汉P4的直接关系人 他可能不知道武汉P4主要项目就是蝙蝠冠状病毒？他当时的操作哪一点可以表明他不是故意想让病毒扩散到全世界？

这次这事也是一样的经过和逻辑 最早是右媒捅出来 如果不是拼命炒作搞得让大部分人都看不下去了 逼灯是大概率就像以前一样装看不见了 要知道这不是第一次间谍气球编队入侵 这都已经入侵美国领空了 主权都被多次侵犯了 早就发现了一直装看不到？这还是个正常国家的正常政府？这也是为什么这次还是迟迟不肯击落的原因吧
 
还有一大堆神志不清的人仍然在脑补逼灯搁这下大棋呢 又是啥“团结盟友”、“老谋深算”、“充满智慧”一类的八股文开始没命复读起来 他们的意思是 逼灯就是“为了让全美看到气球从而调动起反共情绪”？ 又赢赢赢了是吧 真是让人笑掉大牙了😅