Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ), reportedly on Kamala Harris’ vice president short list, co-founded a spy balloon company funded by venture capital linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
The company, World View, initially sought to contribute to space tourism using balloons, although the advancement of technology later led to a change in its vision, Fox News reported.
“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 World View spokesperson told the outlet.
“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,” the spokesperson added.
World View received funding from Tencent in 2013 and 2016. Tencent, a leading Chinese corporation, has “zero access, zero input and zero control” over the balloon company, World View claimed.
Tencent, however, has collected data using its app called WeChat, which has been considered a surveillance tool for the CCP, according to the report.
“The current leadership believed it was a mistake for the company to accept Chinese investment when it did,” the World View spokesperson said. “When new leadership arrived in 2019 and learned of that investment, they swiftly moved to ensure World View was protected from any and all involvement from representatives of Chinese investors.”
Kelly left World View in 2019 and has no financial interests in the company.
In February 2023, the U.S. military shot down a Chinese spy balloon over the Atlantic Ocean.
While China claimed the balloon was a “civilian airship used for research,” a senior U.S. official said the balloon was “intentional.”
