Before becoming a senator, Mark Kelly co-founded a company called World View, which started with space tourism but shifted to using high-tech balloons for surveillance, including for the U.S. Department of Defense. Interestingly, the company received early funding from Tencent, a major Chinese corporation with ties to the Chinese Communist Party. This connection raises eyebrows, especially as Kelly is considered a potential vice-presidential pick for Kamala Harris. Amid rising U.S.-China tensions over surveillance, Kelly’s involvement with World View, now secured in a blind trust, adds a twist to his political journey.
Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., was not only an astronaut before he was elected to the Senate, but he also co-founded a spy balloon firm that received funding from a Chinese venture financier who had close ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
Kelly, who is supposedly among Vice President Kamala Harris’s short list of potential running mates, co-founded Tucson, Arizona-based World View in 2012 to utilize stratospheric balloons to enable space tourism.
Although Kelly’s company first concentrated on space tourism using balloons, the concept changed as the business’s technology advanced.
“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.”
According to Axios, World View received venture financing from Tencent in 2013 and again in 2016 not long after it was founded.
Xu Chenye, Chen Yidan, Zhang Zhidong, “Pony” Ma Huateng, and Zeng Liqing formed Tencent, one of the biggest companies in China, in 1998. With a $32.1 billion net worth, “Pony” Ma Huateng was ranked as the fourth richest man in China by Forbes last year. Ma leads Tencent as its CEO as well.
In 2021, the Wall Street Journal revealed that Tencent has amassed a vast amount of data from WeChat, the most popular social media app in China, through its mobile app. Over one billion monthly active users, the most of whom are in China, processed their chat discussions and financial transactions, which is how the data was gathered. Because of this, Tencent’s platform WeChat has become an effective monitoring tool for the Chinese government, which is said to control Tencent and frequently order it to repress opposing viewpoints.
Tencent has “zero access, zero input, and zero control” over the business, according to World View, which told Fox News Digital on Saturday, citing Tencent’s connections to the Chinese government.
“The current leadership believed it was a mistake for the company to accept Chinese investment when it did,” a company 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.”
However, given that Kelly is a potential vice presidential candidate, concerns about the company’s early ties to the Chinese businessman may arise. This is especially true in light of China’s February 2023 surveillance balloon incident, which was finally brought down by a fighter jet off the coast of South Carolina.
The episode heightened relations between the United States and China and sparked rumors that the Chinese government was spying on the United States.
To focus on his campaign for the U.S. Senate in 2019, Kelly left his role at World View.
A representative for the business stated that Kelly’s residual financial interest in World View is protected by a blind trust and that, upon leaving, Kelly relinquished all access, ownership, and control over the business.
The CEO of World View, Jane Poynter, reportedly informed the Chinese news site Pengpai in 2014 that Kelly had a meeting with David Wallerstein, the head of Tencent USA, and “introduced space tourism technology to him.” This information was reported by Axios.
In 2020, Kelly reported to The Arizona Republic that he spent between thirty and sixty seconds to a minute in a “very brief conversation” with a representative of Tencent.
When Fox News Digital asked Kelly for comment on the situation, Kelly did not reply.
Kelly’s political achievements were highlighted in a story on him that appeared in the New York Times on Friday. Kelly is a veteran of the Navy. Republican strategist Daniel Scarpinato, who was consulted by the journal, provided insight into Kelly’s potential obstacles if he is chosen to run for vice president.
“Mr. Kelly has also not faced the harsh spotlight of a national campaign, and has potential political liabilities like a high-altitude surveillance balloon company he helped found with Chinese venture capital,” the New York Times wrote of Scarpinato’s take.
Contact with Scarpinato for additional remarks was unsuccessful.
In addition to surveillance, World View provides remote sensing services to several industries, including oil and gas, utility, mining, shipping, and insurance.
A few months back, GreatGameInternational reported that local news media stated a U.S. spy balloon crashed in northeast Syria near Rmelan, close to a U.S. facility.
2 Responses
Nothing is given unless asked for, why did Kelly go to China for money?💵
The devil plays both sides. Things are not as they seem. All men and women of this world are stuck in the middle of their war game and we are in their way. They want at least 90% of us gone and they are all involved. This I believe. Be Blessed … till JESUS comes. It won’t be long now. Just saying.