(Congress Report) – Before Arizona Democrat and former astronaut Mark Kelly became a senator, he also helped to co-found a company that specialized in the creation of spy balloons. Guess who partially fund this little project? A venture capitalist hailing from China who has a whole lot of connections to the Chinese Communist Party. This seems awfully strange when you think back to the spy balloon from China that flew over the United States in February 2023, doesn’t it?
According to an article from Fox News, Kelly is currently on the short list of potential vice president running mates being considered by Vice President Kamala Harris for her presidential campaign as the Democratic Party nominee. The report reveals Kelly co-founded a company called World View in 2012 that is based out of Tucson, Arizona. The main objective of the project was to help create space tourism using stratospheric balloons.
No thanks. The idea of being miles and miles above the earth, almost out of the atmosphere, hanging by a balloon, just does not do it for me.
However, the focus of the company soon shifted a bit.
“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 said in comments given to 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,” Fox disclosed.
“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,” the article continued.
World View responded to the revelation of Tencent’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party by telling Fox News last Saturday that Tencent has “zero access, zero input and zero control” over their company. I guess we’re just supposed to take their word for it, but I can’t do that after the whole spy balloon thing. It’s all too convenient.
“The current leadership believed it was a mistake for the company to accept Chinese investment when it did,” a company spokesperson commented. “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.”
“But the company’s early connections with the Chinese capitalist could raise questions as Kelly is being considered as a candidate for vice president, especially after China floated a surveillance balloon over the U.S. in February 2023, which was ultimately shot down by a fighter jet off the coast of South Carolina,” the piece added.
Tensions between the US and China hit an all-time high after the incident and increased concerns that the communist nation might be spying on America. Kelly stepped away from his position at World View in 2019 in order to focus on his bid for the Senate. A spokesperson for the company also stated that the financial interest Kelly has in World View is in a blind trust. They further elaborated that Kelly gave up all access, interest, and control of the company when he made his exit.
“Axios reported that in 2014, Jane Poynter, the former CEO of World View, told Chinese news outlet Pengpai that Kelly met with the head of Tencent USA, David Wallerstein, and ‘introduced space tourism technology to him,'” Fox noted.
In an interview with The Arizona Republic back in 2020, Kelly remarked that he had a “very brief conversation” with someone working for Tencent that lasted from 30 seconds to a full minute.
Kelly has yet to respond to Fox News’ request for a statement concerning this matter.
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