Despite Biden administration officials assuring the American public that the Chinese spy balloon did not collect and transmit data, a previously unreported phone call paints a different picture of top officials hiding information about the balloon.<\/p>\n
According to NBC News, a previously unreported Jan. 27 phone call between President Joe Biden\u2019s top military adviser, Gen. Mark Milley and NORAD chief Gen. Glen VanHerck sheds lights about China\u2019s surveillance balloon.<\/p>\n
The administration initially hoped to keep the balloon\u2019s existence a secret from Congress and the public, the outlet reported, citing multiple former and current administration and congressional officials.<\/p>\n
\u2018Before it was spotted publicly, there was the intention to study it and let it pass over and not ever tell anyone about it,\u2019 one former senior U.S. official told NBC.<\/p>\n
A senior Biden administration official denied allegations that they attempt to conceal the incident, saying decisions were made to protect sensitive intelligence capabilities.<\/p>\n
\u2018To the extent any of this was kept quiet at all, that was in large part to protect intel equities related to finding and tracking them,\u2019 the official told NBC. \u2018There was no intention to keep this from Congress at any point.\u2019<\/p>\n
During the Jan. 27 phone call, Milley called VanHerck, and said the Pentagon planned to send up F-22 jets\u00a0and other aircraft alongside the object and attempt to gauge its characteristics.<\/p>\n
Soon after that call, U.S. military jets used targeting pods to determine the object was a balloon the size of three school buses and equipped with a massive surveillance payload but no offensive capabilities, NBC reported.<\/p>\n
Biden was not briefed on the balloon until Feb. 1, NBC reported. The public did not hear about the Chinese spy balloon until Feb. 2, when NBC News broke the story.<\/p>\n
VanHerck warned that the Chinese balloon program remains active and that the U.S. has failed to develop systems to detect and track the craft.<\/p>\n
\u2018It exposed significant gaps, long range gaps, for us to be able to see potential threats to the homeland.\u2019 VanHerck said. \u2018I think that opened the eyes of a lot of people.\u2019<\/p>\n
The top military official said that the U.S. is \u2018not where it needs to be\u2019 in the development of \u2018deterrence options.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Time is the opportunity to create deterrence options or, if required, defeat options,\u2019 he said, adding that the U.S. is still \u2018not where we need to be.\u2019<\/p>\n
According to the outlet, Biden officials privately lamented the public outcry and consequences of the spy balloon\u2019s reveal in early 2023.<\/p>\n
Officials, in their view, claimed that the spy balloon\u2019s reputational consequences for China and U.S. relations posed a far graver threat than the balloon entering U.S. airspace.<\/p>\n
\u2018It caused so many problems,\u2019 one senior administration official said.<\/p>\n
President Biden\u2019s White House has stated the delay in shooting down the surveillance craft was due to safety precautions as the balloon was carrying several thousand pounds of equipment.<\/p>\n
The U.S. eventually shot down the craft over open water off the coast of South Carolina, leading to questions about why that wasn\u2019t done as it crossed water near Alaska.<\/p>\n\n
Despite Biden administration officials assuring the American public that the Chinese spy balloon did not collect and transmit data, a previously unreported phone call paints a different picture of top officials hiding information about the balloon. According to NBC News, a previously unreported Jan. 27 phone call between President Joe Biden\u2019s top military adviser, Gen. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":13243,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-13242","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13242\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}