One of Donald Trump’s senior advisers on national security has admitted to being baffled by the president-elect’s attempts to conduct diplomacy via Twitter, saying: “I can’t keep up with the tweets.”

Former CIA director James Woolsey made the remark on Sunday morning, in an appearance on ABC’s This Week.

Early on Saturday, Trump tweeted a comment on the seizure this week by China of an unmanned US naval vessel in the South China Sea, an act which has contributed to rising tension between the US and China and which Senator John McCain told CNN’s State of the Union was a “gross violation of international law”.

“China steals United States Navy research drone in international waters,” Trump wrote, “rips it out of water and takes it to China in unpresidented act.”

The tweet was reissued with the correct spelling of “unprecedented” and the tweet containing the error deleted.

On Saturday evening, after China said it would return the drone, Trump used Twitter to say: “We should tell China that we don’t want the drone they stole back – let them keep it!”

On ABC, Woolsey was asked about Trump’s tweets and one by his communications director, Jason Miller, who wrote on Saturday: “Donald Trump gets it done. China says it will return US drone it seized.”

“I don’t know,” Woolsey said. “I can’t keep up with the tweets. I don’t do the social media myself, so who knows.”

The Pentagon said the drone, also described as a “glider” or unmanned underwater vehicle, was deployed by civilian contractors aboard the USNS Bowditch, a scientific research ship.

A Chinese defense ministry spokesman, Yang Yujun, said in a statement late on Saturday that a Chinese navy lifeboat had discovered the device on Thursday.

“In order to prevent this device from posing a danger to the safe navigation of passing ships and personnel,” he said, “the Chinese lifeboat adopted a professional and responsible attitude in investigating and verifying the device.”

The Pentagon spokesman, Peter Cook, said in a statement the US had “secured an understanding” for the return of the drone, after a formal diplomatic complaint. The Chinese statement said it would be returned “through appropriate means”.

Trump’s intervention could extend one of the most serious incidents between the US and the Chinese militaries in years.

“China will continue to maintain vigilance against the relevant US activities,” Yang said, “and will take necessary measures to deal with them.”

The drone was seized about 57 miles north-west of Subic Bay near the Philippines in the South China Sea, which China claims virtually in its entirety, the navy captain Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said on Friday.



“It is ours,” he said. “It’s clearly marked as ours. We would like it back, and we would like this not to happen again.” Davis said the drone cost about $150,000 and was largely made of commercial, off-the-shelf technology.

On CNN, McCain said he did not know what Trump was aiming to achieve with his tweets, but said he did know “the Chinese are able to do a thing called reverse engineering where they are able to, while they hold this drone … find out all of the technical information, and some of it is pretty valuable”.

“But the fundamental here,” the Republican senator said, “is that the Chinese have taken an American vehicle in international waters in gross violation of international law.

“Maybe they saw the success that the Iranians had after they captured two American vessels [in January] and put American sailors on their knees, and then when they returned them the American secretary of state [John Kerry] thanked them for that.

“Look, there is no strength on the part of the USA. Everybody is taking advantage of it and hopefully that will change soon, but it’s almost unheard of for American vehicles [or] ships in international waters being taken by another Iranian, or in this case Chinese, ship in gross violation of international law. They are flaunting it.”

Davis said the USNS Bowditch came within 500 yards of the Chinese ship that took the drone. The US boat carried some small arms, he said, but no shots were fired.

Bonnie Glaser, senior adviser for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the seizure occurred inside the exclusive economic zone of the Philippines, not China, and thus appeared to be a violation of international law.



Davis said it could be the first time in recent history that China had taken a US naval vessel. Some observers called it the most significant dispute between the sides’ militaries since an April 2001 collision between a US navy surveillance aircraft and a Chinese fighter jet, about 70 miles from China’s Hainan island.

US-China relations are tense. China has been building artificial islands in the South China Sea. It was reported this week that anti-aircraft and anti-missile weapons had been installed.

Beijing was also angered by Trump’s decision to talk by phone with the Taiwanese president, Tsai Ing-wen, on 2 December.

The president-elect subsequently said he did not feel “bound by a one-China policy” regarding the status of Taiwan, unless the US could gain trade or other benefits from China. China considers the self-governing island its own territory, to be recovered by force if it deems necessary.