3 April: China’s spy balloon that flew over the U.S. in February was able to collect electronic signals from several U.S. military sites, despite the Biden administration’s efforts to block it from doing so, NBC News reported on Monday, citing two current senior U.S. officials and one former senior administration official.
The balloon, which was controlled by Beijing, flew over some of the sites multiple times, sometimes in a figure-eight pattern, and transmitted the data it gathered back to China in real time, the officials said.
The officials said the signals China collected could include information from weapons systems or communications from base personnel, rather than images.
The Biden administration tried to limit the balloon’s intelligence collection by moving around potential targets and jamming its ability to pick up their signals, the officials said.
The Defense Department referred NBC News to comments from February in which senior officials said the balloon had “limited additive value” for intelligence collection by China “over and above what [China] is likely able to collect through things like satellites in low earth orbit.”
China has repeatedly denied that the balloon was a spy vessel and said it was a civilian airship that accidentally went off course. China has not said which company, department or organization owned the balloon, despite several requests for comment by NBC News.
The balloon entered U.S. airspace over Alaska on Jan. 28 and flew over the U.S. and Canada for a week before being shot down off the Atlantic Coast on President Joe Biden’s orders.
The Chinese balloon incident caused U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to delay a planned visit to Beijing and worsened the already tense relations between Washington and Beijing.