WASHINGTON DC – Maybe they came from China. Maybe from somewhere farther away. Much farther away.
The four aerial objects shot down by U.S. warplanes have led to rampant misinformation about the devices, their origin and purpose. It is further evidence of how the combination of complex events and lack of information combine to give rise to unfounded conjecture and misinformation.
“There will be an investigation and we will know more, but until then this story has created a breeding ground for people interested in speculating or stirring the waters for their own purposes,” said Jim Ludes, a former national defense analyst and now director of the Pell Center for International Relations at Salve Regina University.
“In part,” he added, “because it justifies so many narratives about government secrets.”
President Joe Biden and senior officials in Washington have said little about the downed devices, the first of which, weeks ago, was a suspected Chinese spy balloon. Three other unidentified objects have since been shot down, the most recent of which was last Sunday over Lake Huron on the U.S.-Canadian border. Pentagon officials said they posed no security threats, but without disclosing their origins or purposes.
On Monday, many social networking sites in the United States were abuzz with theories that Biden had launched the devices to distract people’s attention from more pressing problems, such as immigration, inflation, the war in Ukraine or Republican investigations into his son Hunter Biden.
While these theories abounded mostly on fringe sites frequented by far-right people, unsubstantiated rumors and conspiracy theories also appeared on Twitter, Facebook and other platforms.
One of the most widespread theories insinuates that the White House and Pentagon used the flying devices to distract attention from a chemical spill weeks earlier in Ohio.
That accident, caused by a train derailment, occurred days before the most recent devices were brought down, and received extensive press coverage. Still, it remained the most searched topic on Google on Monday, a sign that it continues to draw widespread public interest.
Misleading theories about flying objects have also sparked violent threats, according to an analysis by SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks extremist rhetoric online. After the White House said several spy flights occurred and went undetected during Donald Trump’s presidency, an article circulated on far-right sites called for the execution of officials from that presidency who would have withheld information.
U.S. believes the three downed objects are not linked to China
The United States believes that the three flying objects it shot down in recent days are not linked to China and could be entities used for commercial or research purposes, totally harmless, said Tuesday John Kirby, one of the White House spokesmen.
Kirby, however, pointed out that this information is provisional and that the United States is still looking for the remains of these three objects to analyze them and get a better idea of their nature.
“For now, and I’m cautioning that this is just for now, we have seen no indication or anything that points to the specific possibility that these three objects are part of the People’s Republic of China’s spying program, or that they were involved in any kind of intelligence gathering,” he said in a call with reporters.
Kirby revealed that U.S. intelligence is considering the possibility that the objects are linked to commercial or research entities and are “totally benign”.
The United States shot down on February 4 a Chinese “spy” balloon over Atlantic waters off the coast of South Carolina, and in the last three days has shot down three other flying objects in its territory and Canada, of which so far it has not been able to confirm their origin.
After the Chinese “spy” balloon incident, the Government of Joe Biden accused the Chinese Executive of having developed, with the involvement of its Armed Forces, a “program” of spy balloons, which have already flown over more than 40 countries in five continents.
For its part, the Chinese Government assured that the first object shot down was a weather balloon that deviated from its trajectory and has denounced that at least ten US balloons have flown over China in the last year, something that the US denies.