China seems to have suspended its global surveillance balloon program after a balloon was spotted drifting over the United States in February.
But now an anonymous reader shares this report from CBS News:
Seven months later, General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told CBS News Sunday morning“The balloon was not spying. “The intelligence community’s assessment – and it’s a high-confidence assessment – (is) that there was no intelligence gathering by this balloon.” did he declare.
So why did it happen in the United States? There are various theories, with at least one main theory being that he went off the rails. The balloon was headed toward Hawaii, but winds at 60,000 feet apparently took over. “These winds are very strong,” Milley said. “The particular engine of this plane cannot go against these winds at this altitude…”
After the Navy raised the wreckage from the bottom of the Atlantic, technical experts discovered that the balloon’s sensors had never been activated over the continental United States. But by then, the damage to U.S.-China relations had already been done.
On CBS News Sunday morningthe host had this exchange with the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
CBS: “In the end, it was a spy balloon, but it wasn’t espionage?”
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: “I would say it was a spy balloon that we know with a high degree of certainty received no intelligence and transmitted no intelligence to China.”
