Last year, the administration allowed a Chinese Communist Party spy balloon to fly over our secure installations throughout the nation. As it happens, Sen. Mark Kelly owns a CCP-funded spy balloon company.
Axios reported last year that Tucson-based World View, cofounded by now-U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly in 2012 and a vice presidential prospect, received venture capital from Tencent. It is among the largest tech companies in Communist China. He received funding from them in 2013 and 2016.
Tencent, like most Chinese tech giants, is integrally tied to the Chinese Communist Party.
Yes, but World View president and CEO Ryan Hartman told The Arizona Republic in 2020 that Tencent had “zero access, zero input, and zero control” over the company.
They still took money from communist China to create a lucrative business.
Tencent says it stopped investing after the Arizona company pivoted to a defense-oriented business from space tourism.
Today, World View contracts with the U.S. government and private companies to provide aerial surveillance via balloon.
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About 65% of the company’s work last year was “defense-related,” Hartman told Breaking Defense.
The Pentagon’s Defense Counterintelligence Security Agency examined World View in 2019 and cleared the company to handle military work, The Republic reported.
Claire Chu, senior China analyst at defense intelligence company Janes, told Axios Phoenix the balloon provides an opportunity to more carefully examine Chinese holdings in critical U.S. industries, including Tencent’s investment in World View.
“It’s just not a good look to have one of the largest Chinese investors, a Chinese company that’s involved in a lot of critical technologies back home, involved in potential U.S. surveillance capabilities here,” she says.
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