Pentagon monitoring suspected Chinese language seek balloon over U.S.

And joining us right now is wardwick Mcneil he's the senior policy analyst for Longview Global and a cmbc contributor good morning to you let's start with the balloon um is this is this normal course have there been balloons flying over us for long do we have balloons flying over China.

Well Andrew listen uh Nations do uh do reconnaissance for sure this one is a bit bizarre and provocative because it's not going to gain much more uh intelligence than their low orbit satellite so it just seems provocative and it happens quite frankly at the at the wrong time we have a new Republican control house that's standing up a.

Select committee on China we have the blinking trip and so this is bizarre to me it's just you don't get much value in doing this other than a poke in the eye so I don't understand it are you putting this in the category of poking the eye premeditated intentional poking the eye ahead of this meeting uh that you know making or or uh you know one hand's not.

Talking to the other hand and they just happen to be doing this and the timings is not great I mean I I'm not making excuses for how this happened no I think you're right Andrew to point out both of those things and both the possibilities look when I was in the Obama Administration secretary Gates was on a trip to China when China launched.

The j-22 test fighter uh and it was just absolutely bizarre to us that it would happen at a time when secretary Gates was there and the excuse we got was that one hand wasn't talking to the other so all those things are possible but you know we're at a stage now as Ray was talking about where you have to be careful not to tip the balance one way.

Or the other and Lead have a misunderstanding lead to something greater okay so I got a a complicated one for you I was talking to a U.S CEO last week who said it does business in China said my worry today is not so much that the Chinese either try to kick me out of the country.

Don't let me exit whatever with my business my worry today is that the U.S is so hawkish about China that actually I get put on some kind of list in the United States where it because where I where I'm effectively shamed out of doing business in China I thought that was a fascinating sort of twist on where we are and I'm curious.

Where you are as a result well let's go back to what uh Ray said yesterday which I think is an important thing for us to focus on he is right that it is possible that an economic War a tit protect like we saw during the Trump Administration could happen and businesses are going to be in the crossfire whether it's on the U.S side.

Or on the the Chinese side and so the real question is how are businesses planning for this new environment and so far Andrew many uh have sort of carried along as as though we hope that at some point this will return to a pre-trump or Obama era of cooperation relationship that's not the trajectory here the tone they change but the Strategic trajector.

Is competition and there will be potentially some collateral damage on the business side as a result of that competition

Sharing is caring!