(WASHINGTON) — Over an hourlong conversation this weekend, the top diplomats from China and the U.S. zigzagged through an agenda filled with contentious topics, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken issuing blunt warnings to his counterpart regarding Beijing’s expansive spy balloon program and fears the country could step up its support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“We had a very direct, very clear conversation about the Chinese surveillance balloon being sent over our territory in violation of our sovereignty, in violation of international law,” Blinken told ABC “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz in an interview just after his closed-door talk. “I told Wang Yi, my Chinese counterpart, that that action was unacceptable and must never happen again.”

The meeting, which came together in the late hours of Saturday evening on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, was the first in-person interaction between Blinken and China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi since a suspected Chinese surveillance aircraft was spotted hovering over American airspace, prompting Blinken to scuttle plans for a visit to Beijing at the last minute.

The lengthy discussion showcased deep fractures between the two superpowers and prompted fears that what’s often described as the world’s most consequential bilateral relationship could be deteriorating to dangerous lows.

On “This Week” on Sunday, Blinken also made clear that U.S. concerns about China extend beyond espionage, saying he had voiced his “growing concern” that Beijing may be considering providing military aid to Russia to support its ongoing invasion of Ukraine, a focal point of the summit in Munich.

“China has been engaged in providing rhetorical, political, diplomatic support to Russia,” Blinken said. “But we have information that gives us concern that they are considering providing lethal support to Russia in the war against Ukraine. And it was important for me to share very clearly with Wang Yi that this would be a serious problem.”

Whether Wang will heed that warning remains unclear. U.S. officials, including Blinken, were hesitant to characterize China’s side of the conversation but said that no apology was offered for the surveillance balloon incident.

In fact, in the days since the aircraft was shot down off the coast of South Carolina on Feb. 4, China has only doubled down on its claims that the balloon was a harmless, unmanned civilian vehicle — an explanation that directly conflicts with U.S. assessments.

In the hours before his meeting with Blinken, Wang described the Biden administration’s response as “absurd and hysterical.”

Raddatz pressed Blinken on the view among some U.S. officials that the path the balloon took over the continental United States may not have been the original plan.

“Martha, I can’t speak to their original intent,” Blinken said. But he stressed that once the balloon was over the country, “the balloon attempted to surveil very critical, important military installations.”

In an initial readout of Wang’s engagement with Blinken, Beijing said Wang “expressed China’s solemn position on the so-called airship incident, demanding that the United States change its course and face up to and solve the damage caused by the indiscriminate use of force.”

A subsequent readout provided by China’s Foreign Ministry took a sterner view of both the balloon altercation and China’s ties to Russia.

“If the US continues to dramatize, hype up or escalate the situation, it will be met in kind for as long as it takes. All consequences arising thereof shall be borne by the US side,” Chinese officials said of the balloon.

The officials said that in Wang’s meeting with Blinken, on Russia and Ukraine, Wang “stressed … China adheres to principles and stays committed to promoting peace talks.” The Chinese said their relationship with Russia was a “comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination” but insisted it “is built on the basis of non-alliance, non-confrontation and non-targeting of third countries.”

In the days that followed the balloon shoot-down earlier this month, the State Department declassified intelligence that China has overflown surveillance balloons above 40 countries, something Blinken said on “This Week” was top of mind for many officials in Munich.

“There’s a real concern that I’m hearing here from other countries, from allies and partners alike, about this program. And I think countries are — I was gonna say ‘pleased,’ pleased is the wrong word — they appreciate the fact that we’ve exposed it,” Blinken told Raddatz.

Another key focus of the conference was sustaining support for Ukraine as the country girds itself for another Russian offensive.

Kyiv has requested F-16 fighter jets, and while the U.S. hasn’t ruled out the possibility, Blinken signaled the administration wasn’t ready to hand over the aircraft just yet.

“We’re in very close collaboration and coordination with the Ukrainians precisely on this question of what do they need at any given time. But what’s very important is this: What we should not do, any of us, is to focus or get fixated on any particular weapons system because the weapon system itself, as important as it is, is not is not sufficient. You have to make sure that Ukrainians are trained on the systems that are being provided,” Blinken said. “If they’re not trained on them, they can’t use them.”

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(GAZIANTEP, Turkey) — It was only a matter of time before the region surrounding Turkey and Syria experienced “the big one,” according to experts.

Tens of thousands of people died in a pair of cataclysmic earthquakes that rocked the region on Feb. 6. First, a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck Gaziantep, in southeastern Turkey along the border of Syria, followed by a 7.5-magnitude quake nine hours later about 100 miles north of the first, with hundreds of aftershocks in between and beyond.

The quakes took down thousands of buildings in the two countries, killing at least 42,000 people.

While individual earthquake activity is difficult to predict, it was never out of the realm of possibility that a large earthquake would be on the horizon in the region, experts told ABC News.

Turkey lies at the crossroads of tectonic plate activity

The complex tectonic activity that lies beneath essentially ensured that a devastatingly strong earthquake would eventually rock the region, the scientists said.

There are four tectonic plates, massive slabs of rock made of up Earth’s lithosphere, that interact in Turkey. The Arabian and African plates are moving to the north and interacting with the Eurasian plate, which is essentially in place as a boundary to the north, Joshua Russell, a professor of seismology at Syracuse University, told ABC News.

“That stress is essentially squeezing Turkey out to the west into the Aegean,” Alexander Stewart, a professor of geology at St. Lawrence University, told ABC News.

Picture a banana being squeezed out from between the peels, and that is essentially how Turkey is being exuded out into the Aegean Sea as a result of the plate interactions, Stewart said.

What makes Turkey even more vulnerable is the movement from the Anatolian plate is essentially slipping along the fault lines of the North Anatolian fault zone, the most seismically active fault zone in the world, Stewart said.

However, it was the East Anatolian fault zone responsible for the most recent deadly quake, which extends down, through Syria. The energy released from the “rock-to-rock slippage” of the plates onto the East Anatolian fault, which is less active than the North Anatolian fault, is more catastrophic than earthquakes that are releasing the stress on a more consistent basis, Stewart said.

Although the earthquake had a significant magnitude, the readings, which measures the amplitude of the wave forms, or how much fault is moving, on the seismograph don’t tell the full story of the strength of the earthquake.

The earthquake involved a break on fault extended for 300 kilometers, or more than 186 miles, Susan Hough, a seismologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, told ABC News.

“The bigger the fault, the bigger the earthquake,” Russell said, adding that the shallower the earthquake, the more ground motion that occurs.

When the quake happens, it does not shake all at once. From the epicenter, the rupture travels down the fold at about 3 kilometers per second, Hough said. So if it continues for 300 kilometers, it’s actually moving for 100 seconds, Hough said.

So in addition to the very long duration of the quake, it’s also impacting a “huge” area, Hough said.

Stewart estimated that Turkey is in the top 20% of regions in the world that would experience devastation due to earthquakes.

A 7.3-magnitude earthquake in Fukushima, Japan, in March 2022 only killed four people. The magnitude of the earthquake was not “out of the ordinary,” but although Japan is an earthquake-prone region, the country’s economic system is able to provide and engineer structures to withstand moderate earthquake magnitudes.

The same can’t be said for regions like eastern Turkey and Haiti.

In 1936, the North Anatolian fault ruptured beneath Marmara Sea, which also led to tens of thousands of deaths. It was then that building codes began to be instated in the country. Another earthquake in 1999 prompted additional building codes, but they are not enforced, Stewart said.

“It takes a long time to re retrofit buildings, and it’s expensive,” Russell said.

Could a similar earthquake happen in the U.S.?

The West Coast of the continental U.S., as well as Alaska, are prone to earthquakes as well, the experts said.

One of the most destructive earthquakes to occur in the U.S. happened in 1906 when nearly 300 miles of the San Andreas fault ruptured, resulting in an estimated 7.9-magnitude earthquake that killed at least 3,000 people in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 1933, the Newport-Inglewood Fault cased a 6.4-magnitude earthquake in Long Beach, California, resulting in extensive damage and killing up to 120 people.

The Long Beach earthquake “taught engineers a lot about how strongly the ground can shake from a 6.5,” Hough said.

For decades, California has planned its engineering and building codes based on historical seismicity to survive earthquakes of similar magnitudes, the experts said. In addition, single family homes tend to be more resilient to earthquakes than high-rise apartment buildings, Hough said.

Highways in California, especially bridges and overpasses, have also been retrofitted with steel to protect drivers in the event of an earthquake, Hough said.

“In general, California, the overall resilience is is better than in Turkey,” Hough said.

Settlements along fault lines often have high population density because faults tend to present a nice place to live, Hough said. There’s typically surrounding water, mountains and more rain, and people will cluster around those regions, she said.

This can prove problematic, because the closer you are to the moving fault, the more shaking you will experience, Hough said.

“You have the settlements right on top of the fold, and then if you have the construction issues on top of that, it’s kind of a perfect storm for big damage,” she said.

However, biggest earthquakes in the U.S. tend to occur in Alaska.

“No one lives up there,” so those quakes are not publicized as much, Stewart said. But since those earthquakes are so large, they can present other rippling effects, such as tsunamis, Hough said.

Although the U.S. would not experience a death toll of similar caliber to Turkey and Syria, there would be severe economic damage, Stewart said.

“Our efforts in retrofitting and engineering to protect lives in Japan and North America is very high, but it is not going to minimize economic loss,” he said.

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