“Dozens” of countries, including close US allies, have witnessed Chinese spy balloon incursions that were “discovered” by their governments or previous US governments, officials said.
Admiral John Kirby, the National Security Council’s strategic communications coordinator, told a White House briefing that there are still “intense” efforts to recover the wreckage and acknowledged the risks associated with “high-altitude, low-speed aircraft.”
The admiral said the US “failed to definitively assess” what some of the downed objects were, with the exception of the first spy balloon, which was partially recovered, and acted “out of excessive caution” to shoot them down. According to him, outwardly they did not communicate.
“There are active efforts to find the remains of these objects so that we can understand and better communicate to the American people what they are,” he added. Two objects were shot down over the countryside in Alaska and Canada, and a third fell into Lake Huron near the US border.
The admiral said the US was already aware of China’s balloon spying program because of the “comprehensive assessment of China’s intelligence capabilities” requested by Joe Biden when he became president.
He added: “For reasons you will all understand, we cannot go into detail about how we detect and counter foreign intelligence efforts because much of what we have done and are doing is confidential.
“But we have been able to establish that China has a program of high-altitude intelligence liaison balloons linked to the People’s Liberation Army. It worked during the previous administration, but they didn’t find it.
“We opened it, we followed it and studied it carefully to extract as much information from it as possible. We know that these PRC observation balloons have passed through dozens of countries on different continents around the world, including some of our closest allies and partners.
“We found that these balloons provided limited additional capabilities to other PRC reconnaissance platforms currently in use in the United States, but as the PRC continues to improve this technology in the future, it could certainly become more valuable to them.” ”
He said the US and Canada “looked closer” to their airspace after spotting the first balloon, which could “at least partially explain” the increase in subsequent incidents.
Mr. Biden has ordered an assessment of the “security risks” associated with unidentified objects and will continue to order downed objects if they represent “the security of the United States and the American people.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre insisted that aliens were not involved in the incidents that set the conspiracy theorists on fire.
The official said: “I know there have been questions and concerns, but there is no evidence of aliens or extraterrestrial activity in these recent moves.”
She added: “I wanted to make sure the American people knew about it, you all knew it because we heard a lot about it. I loved ET movie, but I’ll stop there.