President Biden, speaking at the G7 summit:
Q: Under this circumstance, how will you manage the diplomatic, you know, relationship with China? And how will you strengthen the U.S. alliance with Japan and ROK in order to counter China? Thank you.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, number one, you’re right — we should have an open hotline. At the Bali conference, that’s what President Xi and I agreed we were going to do and meet on. And then this silly balloon that was carrying two freight cars’ worth of spying equipment was flying over the United States, and it got shot down, and everything changed in terms of talking to one another. I think you’re going to see that begin to thaw very shortly.
“Silly,” huh? That’s odd, back in February, when the president was announcing the shootdown of several unidentified flying objects, Biden did not characterize the balloon as “silly.”
When one of these high-altitude surveillance balloons entered our airspace over the continental United States earlier in the month, I gave the order to shoot it down as soon as it would be safe to do so. The military advised against shooting it down over land because of the sheer size of it. It was the size of multiple school busses, and it posed a risk to people on the ground if it was shot down where people lived.
Instead, we tracked it closely, we analyzed its capabilities, and we learned more about how it operates.
And because we knew its path, we were able to protect sensitive sites against collection.
We waited until it was safely over water, which would not only protect civilians but also enable us to recover substantial components for further analys- — for further analytics.
And then we shot it down, sending a clear message — clear message: The violation of our sovereignty is unacceptable.
We will act to protect our country, and we did.
What’s more, in early April, NBC News reported that the Chinese spy balloon “was able to gather intelligence from several sensitive American military sites, despite the Biden administration’s efforts.” Two current senior U.S. officials and one former senior administration official told NBC News that China had enough control over the balloon to steer it to make multiple passes over some sites, at times flying figure-eight formations, and the balloon transmitted the information back to Beijing in real time.
The intelligence gathered by equipment the balloon carried was characterized as “mostly from electronic signals” picked up from weapons systems and base personnel, rather than images.
Did the president just forget what he was briefed again? Or is it now just more politically advantageous to pretend that the spy balloon was just a “silly” distraction from the inevitable thawing of U.S.-Chinese relations?