Was China held accountable for the balloon?

 

https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/09/politics/spy-balloon-technology/index.html

Was China held accountable for the balloon? Why is no one pushing to find the origin of Covid? China is out of control and we don’t have leadership that is strong enough or willing to wrangle them in.

Does anyone really believe President Xi didn’t know about the balloon that floated over our military installations? If he didn’t know then why was China upset when the balloon was shot down? China violated our airspace! “Officials” even said they don’t know everything the device is “capable of” or its “specific intent”. So how can they draw all these conclusions and assumptions if they don’t have the evidence?

Romany’s comments are laughable! How can you be “more confident”? Did anyone talk about how to prevent this in the future?

Direct Quotes

A senior State Department official said Thursday that the balloon “was capable of conducting signals intelligence collection operations” and was part of a fleet that had flown over “more than 40 countries across five continents.”

The Biden administration has determined that the Chinese balloon was operating with electronic surveillance technology capable of monitoring US communications, according to the official.

“We know the PRC used these balloons for surveillance,” the official said. “High-resolution imagery from U-2 flybys revealed that the high-altitude balloon was capable of conducting signals intelligence collection operations.”

The officials added that understanding the components of the balloon is vital intelligence and could be “important pieces of evidence for future criminal charges that could be brought.”

Despite the latest revelations about the capabilities of the spy balloon, the Pentagon has insisted since the vessel was first acknowledged publicly that it does not give China capabilities above and beyond what they already have from spy satellites or other means.

“We did not assess that it presented a significant collection hazard beyond what already exists in actionable technical means from the Chinese,” said Gen. Glenn VanHerck, the commander of US Northern Command and NORAD, on Monday.

Lawmakers were told Thursday that the order to send the balloon was dispatched without Chinese President Xi Jinping’s knowledge, sources familiar with the briefing said.

The idea Xi was unaware of the balloon “is the working theory and an ongoing intelligence gap,” a source briefed on the matter later told CNN. This is among the things the intelligence community is actively working on, the source said, making clear it’s far from a definitive assessment.

Another source familiar with the briefings said officials said the balloon would give the Chinese better photos and signals collection than satellites, as well as a better ability to steer and hover longer over collection targets.

In the classified congressional briefings, the administration officials argued that the US didn’t move earlier to shoot down the balloon in part over fears it could provoke an escalation of military tensions with China or even a military conflict.

The officials told lawmakers one of the reasons the balloon was not first shot down when it entered Alaskan airspace is that the waters there are cold and deep, making it less likely they could have recovered the balloon, according to the sources.

But Republican Sen. Mitt Romney told CNN he believes the US made right decision to wait before shooting it down.

“I believe that the administration, the president, our military and intelligence agencies, acted skillfully and with care. At the same time, their capabilities are extraordinarily impressive. Was everything done 100% correctly? I can’t imagine that would be the case of almost anything we do. But I came away more confident,” Romney said Thursday.

Democratic Sen. Jon Tester of Montana telling officials that he did not know how they could unequivocally say it was not a military threat.

Pentagon officials said at the hearing that the Defense Department was not concerned about the balloon gathering intelligence over Alaska as it was not near sensitive sites.

The balloon first crossed into US airspace over Alaska on January 28

The House on Thursday passed a symbolic resolution condemning China’s surveillance balloon with a vote of 419 to zero.

the officials said that there has not been a determination as to everything the device was capable of doing and its specific intent.

The FBI was alerted to the balloon on February 1,

President Joe Biden suggested Wednesday that bilateral relations with China had not been affected by the balloon fallout, but China reacted angrily to the shootdown

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