- Josh Pieters and Archie Manners flew a mock spy balloon over the Chinese embassy in London.
- The YouTube duo bought a white balloon from eBay that resembled the one shot down over the US.
YouTubers Josh Pieters and Archie Manners flew a white balloon over the Chinese embassy in London, after the US shot down an object it said was being used for spying.
The YouTube duo are best known for their elaborate social experiments such as tricking Carole Baskin into her first live interview, and getting right-wing commentator Katie Hopkins to pick up a fake award the initials of which spelled "cunt."
Their next target was the Chinese Communist Party. In the video they joked that sending a real spy balloon over China would "require the coordination of international government agencies with sign off from presidents and prime ministers."
Instead, they decided to fly their little balloon, equipped with a GoPro, over the Chinese embassy in London.
"Our logic was if a child can fly a balloon and walk around the streets of London, why can't we fly a balloon?" Pieters told Insider. "It was a fairly large balloon, which is normally used for meteorological studies, but it was nonetheless a balloon."
(US officials said the balloon they shot down was much larger — some 200 feet high and carrying heavy equipment suspended underneath.)
In the video, which has 47,000 views on YouTube and over 700,000 on TikTok, the pair fill up a weather balloon that they purchased on eBay with helium from a party-supply store.
Then they headed to the Chinese embassy in central London and gradually lifted the balloon on a rope until it was above the building's roof.
The GoPro caught some footage through the windows of the embassy, but it was "a bit dark and mysterious in there," Pieters said.
"We couldn't make out exactly what was going on inside, but we did see a man on the roof who was conducting what looked like some very, very important business," he said.
Contrary to what Manners and Pieters said in the video, embassies are not considered to be the physical territory of the countries they host. But they are often closely guarded, and attract special care from local law enforcement, in this case London's Metropolitan Police.
The balloon was soaring for around 10 minutes before a security guard came to ask what Pieters and Manners were doing. The guard then made a call and police in a red van — normally reserved for diplomatic protection and counterterrorism — with four armed officers showed up. This was "obviously quite scary," Pieters said.
"They asked us what an earth we thought we were doing, and at that point we said we were just flying a balloon," he said. "So they said, well, can you bring the balloon down. We said, absolutely."
The conversation made it into the video, with the officers saying the stunt could be "offensive" to the people inside the embassy. Manners and Pieters said that wasn't their intention, and quickly brought the balloon down so they could pop it.
"It got real quite quickly," Pieters said. "It's obviously a touchy topic in the world right now, flying a spy balloon."
Insider reached out to the Chinese embassy for comment but did not immediately hear back.