Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), reportedly among the finalists to be Kamala Harris’ running mate, co-founded a spy balloon company with ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
According to Fox News, Kelly “co-founded a company that specializes in spy balloons, which was funded, in part, by a venture capitalist in China with close ties to the Chinese Communist Party.”
Democrat Sen. Mark Kelly — top Kamala VP contender — started spy balloon company funded by Chinahttps://t.co/Xs9W9MHDeh
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) July 29, 2024
Per Fox News:
Kelly, who is reportedly on a short list of running mate contenders under consideration by Vice President Kamala Harris, co-founded Tucson, Arizona-based World View in 2012 with a vision to provide space tourism using stratospheric balloons.
While Kelly’s company started out with a focus on space tourism via balloons, the vision evolved with the maturing of the company’s technology.
“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.
Chinese communist spy balloons are made by a company based in TUCSON, Arizona. The company was co-founded by AZ Senator, Mark Kelly.
Nothing to see here… pic.twitter.com/oKv6GMQQ84
— Kelly J Walker’s FreedomTalk (@RealFreedomTalk) March 7, 2023
“As recently as seven years ago, the company secured funds from Chinese investors,” Axios noted last year.
From Axios:
Tucson-based World View, cofounded by now-U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly in 2012, received venture capital from Tencent — among the largest tech companies in China — both in 2013 and 2016.
Tencent, like most Chinese tech giants, has close ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
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.
When Tencent made its investments, World View was mostly focused on space tourism. Tencent says it stopped investing after the Arizona company pivoted to a defense-oriented business.
Today, World View contracts with the U.S. government and private companies to provide aerial surveillance via balloon.
“Once again, I first broke the Mark Kelly starting a spy balloon company funded by China’s TenCent in 2020. Then I did another story on it 2023 when the spy balloon was traversing the U.S.,” RealClearPolitics political correspondent Susan Crabtree said.
“Now @FoxNews giving @Axios credit for breaking this story after my THREE stories from 2020 and 2023. BUT @Axios never got to the heart of the story and mainly bought into Kelly’s excuses for it,” she added.
Per Susan Crabtree:
The Axios story also never addressed this:
The Defense Counterintelligence Security Agency (DCSA) SUSPENDED the process to grant Kelly’s company clearance for U.S. defense work. I have the emails from DCSA and I’ll attach to this thread.
I’ve included the three main stories I wrote below.
Back in 2020, The spokesperson for Kelly’s balloon company lied to me that they had secured DCSA’s seal of approval.
The DCSA aims to protect U.S. security assets from malign foreign influence.
Here’s the three stories I broke on in reverse chronology – the latest, in 2023, and then the two stories I first broke in 2020 on the same topic.
🚨🚨Once again, I first broke the Mark Kelly starting a spy balloon company funded by China's TenCent in 2020.
Then I did another story on it 2023 when the spy balloon was traversing the U.S.
Now @FoxNews giving @Axios credit for breaking this story after my THREE stories…
— Susan Crabtree (@susancrabtree) July 29, 2024
“Here’s the email I received in 2/23 confirming that the Defense Counterintelligence Security Agency (DCSA) had suspended its process to grant Kelly’s balloon company a clearance to do U.S defense work. DCSA is the U.S. agency that tries to protect U.S. companies from malign foreign influence from China and elsewhere,” Crabtree wrote.
‼️Here's the email I received in 2/23 confirming that the Defense Counterintelligence Security Agency (DCSA) had suspended its process to grant Kelly's balloon company a clearance to do U.S defense work.
DCSA is the U.S. agency that tries to protect U.S. companies from malign… pic.twitter.com/kwmCcX70Lp
— Susan Crabtree (@susancrabtree) July 28, 2024
* Image from Susan Crabtree X Post *
Crabtree wrote in RealClearPolitics in May 2020:
Kelly, however, has been far more reticent about the investment by a Chinese company in a commercial space exploration venture he co-founded. The company, tech giant Tencent, is one of the world’s largest internet enterprises and owns the Chinese social media platform WeChat. The text platform has more than a billion users and is suspected of monitoring the activity of many of them inside and outside of China.
In the fall of 2014, the CEO of World View Enterprises, the company Kelly co-founded, announced during a visit to Beijing that Tencent had invested an undisclosed sum of money in the Tucson-based space travel venture. In April 2016, as part of a subsequent, $15 million investment round, World View announced that it had received more funds from Tencent, along with three other venture capital firms.
Tencent was already under intense U.S. scrutiny before the COVID-19 world crisis. In addition to the surveillance suspicions, Tencent also sparked a U.S. backlash for suspending its streaming of National Basketball Association games after the Houston Rockets’ general manager praised Hong Kong democracy protests last fall.
Now it’s radioactive. A recent University of Toronto study found that WeChat has been censoring keywords relating to the COVID-19 outbreak since at least Jan. 1. Several prominent lawmakers in recent weeks have deemed Tencent an arm of the Chinese Communist Party and a threat to U.S. national security. Republican Sens. Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley in late April introduced a bill aimed at preventing Chinese espionage by prohibiting U.S. federal employees from conducting official business over platforms run by Tencent, Huawei, ZTE and other Chinese companies and barring U.S. tax dollars from being used for any international contracts with those firms.
It’s not just a GOP concern. The United Nations in mid-April backed out of a deal with Tencent to provide videoconferencing and text services at the organization’s 75th anniversary after U.S. officials, lawmakers and human rights groups complained. Louis Charbonneau, the U.N. director for Human Rights Watch, called Tencent “an enabler of Chinese government oppression.”
Kelly is reportedly one of Harris’ top-three contenders for VP.
According to Bloomberg, the list includes “three elected officials with nationwide appeal.”
Kamala Harris Reportedly Narrows List Of Running Mate Candidates To Three
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