earlier this year, ramping up tensions between the world s top two economies, the balloon used commercially available off the shelf technology that was american-made, according to three u.s. officials familiar with the fbi s investigation. nbc news pentagon correspondent, courtney kube is covering the story for us, and joining us now, court, it s always good to talk to you. what can you tell us about the tech on this balloon and what kind of intelligence it was able to actually gather. reporter: as you sai this was commercially available, something that could have been both online by the chinese government or chinese military, whomever it was that put together this balloon and flew it over toward the united states. so this was not sensitive technology that china was using here. that being said, you remember a couple of weeks ago, president biden said there were two box cars full of surveillance equipment on this enormous balloon. what we know now, according to these preliminary resul
the reason why xi got upset when i shot the balloon down with two box cars full of spy equipment, he didn t know it was there. a great embarrassment for dictators. china reprimanded our ambassador over that. what are we to make of all this? unfortunately, to me this just shows that we continue to be a very poor at diplomacy in our country. there are lots of things we need to push back on china for and lots of things they re doing with stealing inelectric to all property and military and security issues in the south china sea. but we have to try to get positive outcomes for our side. if you just use really school yard taunts against their leader, it is not going to further american interests. it won t give our diplomacy a chance to influence chinese behavior. i have think the administration needs to change track and say look, there is a place and time
accountable for its malign actions all over the world and united states is the first step to getting back on the right track. bill: i take your point. congressman ryan, a lot of people may agree with it. is it smart pool when it comes to politics? we have to be clear about the threat from china. they are our greatest challenge not just militarily but economically. we have to compete to bring jobs back to america that john and i are working on and compete with them to cut off the flow of deadly fentanyl that s pouring into districts like mine and those across the country. so absolutely he is a dictator and we need to compete with him in every dimension. that strength will help deter their provocations and insure peace and stability here in the country and across the world. bill: you guys are sensitive but he talked about the spy balloon. i think this is as descriptive as he has ever gotten. he said two box cars full of spy
the reason why xi jinping got upset in terms of when i shot that balloon down with two box cars full of spy equipment, he didn t know it was there. no, i m serious, said the president. that s what is a great emb embarrassment for dictators when they didn t know what happened. china is looking at an apology or walk back. you can interpret it yourself. martha: breaking knowments ago, president biden talked about all of this. let s bring in fox news senior strategic analyst, retired four-star general, former vice chief of staff of the army and chairman of the institute for the study of war.