The United States Department of Defense, Pentagon has reported a Chinese surveillance balloon, detected to be hovering over Montana. This news comes in days before Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken is scheduled to visit Beijing.
After a recommendation from the Pentagon officials, President Biden has chosen to not shoot down the Chinese Spy Balloon just yet. The officials stated that doing so would also risk the balloon’s debris hitting civilians on the ground.
Publicizing this discovery seemed to have put China on notice ahead of Antony Blinken’s visit to Beijing. This visit is said to be the first by an American secretary of state in about 6 years. During his visit, Mr. Blinken is expected to meet with the Chinese President- Xi Jinping.
Although, the sudden appearance of this mysterious Chinese Spy Balloon is said to raise he state of already escalating tensions between China and America.
What do the Pentagon Officials have to say about the Chinese Spy Balloon?
The Pentagon official also said that this was not the first time China had deployed spy balloons over the United States, although this one has appeared to hover over the country for a little longer. Still, a member of the senior administration who spoke on the condition of anonymity has stated that this Chinese Spy Balloon did not pose any kind of a military or even a physical threat. The senior member also added that the device had a limited value in collecting intelligence.
Another Pentagon official said that the organization did not think that this balloon added any value to what China could obtain through satellite imagery.
Officials at Pentagon said that the balloon might have followed a route from China to the Aleutian Islands of Alaska, through northwest Canada in the past few days before finally arriving someplace over Montana where it was seen lingering on Wednesday.
In a brief statement on late Thursday, the Canadian Department of National Defense said that any movements of this high-surveillance balloon were being “actively tracked” by the North American Aerospace Defense Command, a body part of the US-Canada military partnership. It also stated that all the intelligence agencies of the country were pro-actively working with its American partners to “take all necessary measures to safeguard Canada’s sensitive information from foreign intelligence threats.”
