President Biden on Saturday suggested the situation involving the Chinese spy balloon that flew over the U.S. in February was “more embarrassing” for China than it was “intentional.”
“I don’t think the leadership knew where it was and knew what was in it and knew what was going on,” Biden told reporters one day before secretary of state Antony Blinken arrived in China. “It was, I think it was more embarrassing than it was intentional.”
“And so, I’m hoping that, over the next several months, I’ll be meeting with [Chinese leader] Xi [Jinping] again and talking about legitimate differences we have but also how there’s areas we can get along,” he said.
Blinken’s meeting in China with his Chinese counterpart, Qin Gang, was initially scheduled for February, but was delayed because of the spy balloon, which entered U.S. airspace on January 28 and was ultimately downed by the U.S. military on February 4 off the Carolina coast.
U.S. military and intelligence agencies tracked the Chinese spy balloon for nearly a week before it violated American airspace. As the U.S. monitored the balloon, it appeared headed for the U.S. territory of Guam. But the balloon was seemingly blown off course and instead ended up over Alaska’s Aleutian Islands before ultimately floating over the continental United States, the Washington Post reported.
U.S. officials were said to be considering the possibility that China did not intend to send the spy balloon over the continental United States, but instead took advantage of the balloon being blown off course to surveil sensitive locations in Montana.
The balloon was launched from Hainan Island as part of a program run in part by the People’s Liberation Army air force. U.S. officials tracked the balloon, which was partly directed by air currents and partly piloted remotely, as it may have been blown off course by strong high-altitude winds.
While intelligence officials are unsure if the flight path was intentional, they are confident the balloon was intended for surveillance and that the decision to hover over sensitive nuclear sites in Montana was not accidental, according to the report. The balloon could have been intended for U.S. military installations in the Pacific, which have previously been the targets of Chinese espionage.
The spy balloon successfully collected intelligence from sensitive military sites as it was steered over some military locations multiple times, even in figure eight formations, CNBC previously reported.
China, which has maintained that the balloon was a civilian research craft that was blown off course, criticized the United States’s decision to shoot down the balloon and threatened “countermeasures in accordance with the law against the relevant U.S. entities that undermine China’s sovereignty and security.”
Former secretary of state Mike Pompeo said earlier this year that President Joe Biden’s handling of the Chinese spy balloon was an “enormous mistake” that caused “global shame.”
“The whole world saw a slow-moving balloon transiting Montana, Kansas, South Carolina — and the United States of America did nothing,” the former CIA director added.
Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas) similarly said the balloon should have been taken down sooner.
“I want to start by doing something that I don’t do very often, which is commending Joe Biden for actually having the guts to shoot this down,” Cruz said during an appearance on CBS’s Face the Nation. “That was the right thing to do. That is absolutely what the president should have done. Unfortunately, he didn’t do that until a week after it entered U.S. airspace.”
“He allowed a full week for the Chinese to conduct spying operations over the United States, over sensitive military installations, exposing not just photographs but the potential of intercepted communications,” he added.
Blinken now becomes the first secretary of state to visit China in five years.