Mark Kelly’s past surveillance balloon venture presents political target

Sen. Mark Kelly’s (D-Ariz.) venture into space tourism and defense contracting before he became a senator could become a political target should he join Vice President Harris on the Democratic ticket. 

The company, World View Enterprises, which he co-founded in 2012, received millions in investment funding from one of China’s largest tech companies, Tencent, which is linked to the governing Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Kelly was hammered over the ties during his first Senate race in 2020, and those attacks have started to bubble up again as vice presidential speculation grows, with articles about his China ties in Fox News and other conservative outlets. 

The attacks in Kelly’s 2020 race against Republican Martha McSally did not stop him from flipping the seat long held by former Sen. John McCain (R), and then being reelected in 2022.

However, Kelly’s consideration now as a vice-presidential candidate could thrust him onto the national stage in a political environment that has become increasingly hostile to China and any signs of ties to its government. 

Daniel Scarpinato, a Republican political strategist in Arizona, said Kelly’s former company could complicate the campaign for Democrats. Even though foreign policy and national security are not the top concern for voters, ties to China “could be something that resonates” in a close election. 

“Their entire playbook is to win the Rust Belt, to win states where workers have seen their jobs shift to China,” he said of the Harris campaign. “If you end up having on the ticket someone who has ties to China or to that issue, I mean, that could be a real sledgehammer that Republicans could use across Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania.”

A spokesperson for Kelly’s office declined to comment on this story. The senator stopped his involvement in the Tucson-based World View in 2019 ahead of his Senate run. 

"I've known China as an adversary my entire adult life,” Kelly said in 2020, calling McSally’s attacks “lies.”

World View was initially founded as a space tourism company but has pivoted to become a defense contractor that provides the Pentagon, government agencies and private businesses with aerial surveillance balloons and other remote sensing technology. 

Its primary product, an unmanned surveillance balloon called Stratollite, attracted renewed interest in February 2023, after China flew a spy balloon over the mainland U.S. and an American fighter jet shot it out of the sky over the Atlantic Ocean.

World View received venture capital funding from Tencent, a major technology company that owns the popular WeChat, around 2013 and again in 2016, according to public reports.  

It’s not clear how much Tencent invested, but public reporting in 2016 indicated Tencent was part of a group of investors that injected $15 million at the time.  

Although he is no longer part of the company, financial disclosure reports filed by Kelly in 2021 indicate he has between $100,000 and $250,000 of stock in World View through a blind trust. 

In a statement, World View said Kelly has no “access, interest or control in the company since he left” and that Tencent also “has zero access, zero input and zero control over our company.” 

“The current leadership believe it was a mistake for the company to accept Chinese investment when it did, even if that investment was only in support of our early vision of a space tourism offering, not for development of any defense capabilities,” the company said, explaining new leadership in 2019 moved to protect the business from future Chinese investment. 

“Since then, we have worked closely with our defense customers and partners that frequently examine our company to validate our work remains free of foreign interference,” it added. 

In the mid-2010s, Chinese companies were investing heavily in U.S. businesses, especially related to media and tourism.  

That stopped in 2018, when the U.S. began restricting new investments, including with a law that empowered the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States to more easily block Chinese investors.

Derek Scissors, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who focuses on China’s economy, said Tencent clearly has no influence over World View, and its “peak influence” in 2016 was “easily outweighed” by larger U.S. investors. 

Scissors added that Tencent’s investment, which he said was some $3 million, is a “drop in the bucket” compared to the tens of billions of Chinese funding in the mid-2010s.

“If World View is fully disclosing, other startups who don't disclose or who are funded by Chinese affiliates are a much bigger problem,” he said in an email. 

Republicans have repeatedly raised Kelly’s connection to Tencent and the CCP.  

Nikki Haley ripped Kelly over the ties while stumping for McSally ahead of the 2020 election. 

"China is absolutely our No. 1 national security threat, whether you ask a Republican or a Democrat," Haley said.

"We can't have a senator holding hands with our biggest national security threat,” she added. “He should be completely disqualified from running in this race altogether."

Alex Vogel, CEO of the political consulting firm Vogel Group, said China is the “seminal” national security issue today. 

“The temperature and the politics around Chinese national security issues have fundamentally changed” since Kelly’s last election, he said. “This is a much broader issue ... [and] the fact that this connects to, of all things, high altitude balloons, given the China spy balloon situation, further ratchets that up.” 

World View said in its statement that its “stratospheric ballooning intellectual property has always remained in our control and has never been used for or contributed to China's spy balloon program.” 

Kelly is seen as a top prospect in Harris’s vice presidential selection process, with an announcement expected in the coming days. Other Democratic candidates in the mix are Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro.

Kelly has avoided speculating on whether he will be selected but remained open to the possibility. 

“I think that's going to be something that the vice president is going to have to figure out,” Kelly told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Wednesday. “I think she's got a lot of great choices out there. My focus is not on this, and this is not about me.”

Kelly, who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, would bring significant foreign policy and defense experience to the ticket. Kelly is also a former Navy fighter pilot who retired at the rank of captain, and is a former astronaut.

He also could help Harris with the border, as a rare Democrat who has found a successful moderate stance in a battleground border state.

But China, while less of a campaign issue than the border, remains a bipartisan issue that both Democrats and Republicans want to be seen as strong on.

Barrett Marson, who helps consult campaigns throughout Arizona through a public relations firm, said Kelly and Harris may put up a strong defense against the Chinese investment, but would need to expend political capital on the issue. 

“Just putting them on the defensive on that issue is significant,” he said. “When you’re explaining, you’re losing.” 

And other critics say the Chinese funding of World View undercuts Kelly’s image as an American hero and decorated military veteran and astronaut. 

“Sen. Kelly has kind of this reputation of, because he's an astronaut, he's kind of seen as a hero,” said John Feehery, a longtime GOP political strategist. “But this kind of goes directly at that reputation. ... It'll be an attack point for the Republicans.”