sometimes. so you can jam those kind of things with aircraft, with ground mounted systems. won t go any further than that. but, again, you know, just because this thing is passing overhead doesn t mean it s collecting information because it can be prevented from doing that. we do have the capability to prevent that. the. all right. very good. we ll hear more about all of this in the days to come. lieutenant general marc hertling, great insights as always. thanks very much. thanks, jim. joining me now is democratic congressman adam smith of washington. the ranking member of the house armed services committee. copying man, what is your reaction to the u.s. military shooting down this balloon out over the water this afternoon? where do you come in on this? do you wish it had been shot down sooner? do you think the right precautions were taken to wait until it got over the water so it didn t come down in a populated area, that sort of thing? i think president biden handled the whol
intelligence on us, but you know what, once you notice something like this flying over your territory, the u.s. and canada was also collecting intelligence on this balloon. what the heck is going on. how are they doing things? what kind of things can we intercept? how can we jam this piece of equipment to ensure it doesn t take pictures? who do we notify on all of those bases that it may pass over? how do we get an alert out so the least amount of damage is done. the state department is interacting with others in the chinese government and other allies and be partners telling them what s going on. so there s a lot of intelligence collection going on both ways on this, and what i would guess truthfully, jim, if i were a betting man, that much of the intelligence capability of this balloon was jammed and could not conduct operations. by the way, i ll add one more organization to that long list i