Democratic Senator Mark Kelly is allegedly Barack Obama’s pick for president, but even if he can’t nab the top spot on the Democratic ticket, the swing-state senator has made the shortlist for Kamala Harris’ choice of running mate.
They may both want to reconsider.
Before his tenure as a senator from Arizona, Kelly had an illustrious career as an astronaut and co-founder of World View, a company initially dedicated to space tourism. However, recent reports indicate that Kelly’s entrepreneurial focus shifted from celestial exploration to more terrestrial concerns.
Currently serving on both the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, Kelly launched a business that manufactures surveillance balloons. Notably, one of the company’s significant investors has deep ties to the CCP.
Fox News writes:
“As we matured our technology, we recognized an opportunity for immediate use cases for our technology through remote sensing services to defense, scientific and commercial customers,” a spokesperson for World View told Fox News Digital. “Today, our primary business remains providing remote sensing services to the U.S. Department of Defense and her allies by way of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities, as well as servicing scientific organizations like NASA, NOAA and others to better understand Earth from the unique atmospheric layer of the stratosphere.”
Axios reported that shortly after World View was started, it received venture capital from Tencent in 2013, then again in 2016.
Tencent is one of China’s largest corporations, and it was founded in 1998 by “Pony” Ma Huateng, Zhang Zhidong, Xu Chenye, Chen Yidan and Zeng Liqing. Last year, “Pony” Ma Huateng was listed by Forbes as the fourth-richest man in China with a net worth of $32.1 billion. Ma is also the CEO of Tencent.
The Wall Street Journal reported in 2021 that Tencent collected a trove of data over the years from its mobile app WeChat, the predominant social-media platform in China. The data was collected through its processing of the chat conversations and financial transactions of its over one billion monthly active users, most of them in China. That has made the company’s platform WeChat a powerful surveillance tool for the Chinese government, which reportedly regulates Tencent and regularly has it suppress dissenting views.
In early 2023, a Chinese spy balloon crossed over the United States, sparking significant national and international concern. The high-altitude balloon, equipped with sophisticated surveillance technology, entered U.S. airspace, prompting immediate scrutiny from defense and intelligence agencies. The balloon’s trajectory took it over several sensitive military sites, raising alarms about potential espionage activities.
The U.S. government responded by tracking the balloon closely and eventually shooting it down off the coast of South Carolina. This incident heightened tensions between the U.S. and China, leading to diplomatic protests and increased vigilance in monitoring foreign aerial activities.
After allowing the balloon to cross the entire continental United States, Biden was accused of lying to cover up his incompetent response, which likely led to the compromise of American national security.
