the descriptions we ve read in the indictment, there is the possibility of the compromised sources and methods. that could be the exposure or the identification to a foreign adversary of a u.s. collection capability if they know what we know about them, they can figure out very quickly how we learned that information through technical means. it can also mean the exposure and risk to a human source. and, you know, more broadly, wolf, i have to say that the irresponsible handling of this material is just an absolute insult to the men and women of the intelligence community who spend their lives often at great risk to collect this information and provide it to u.s. decisionmakers and to treat it in the way that we ve seen in these photographs spilling out of boxes on the floor of the bathroom, it s an incredible act of disrespect to the community that spent so much time and effort trying to keep us safe. do these damning details make
watching the movement of that balloon? i think much of the intelligence community, we have an incredible space borne intelligence collection capability ourselves. the chinese have more than 260 military satellites collecting on us. the chinese have an enormous human intelligence campaign against collecting united states. it s principled s cyber inclusion in our databases. putting all that aside, this is a new collection system, we want to know what they re doing, we have to be able to communicate directly to them, to knock it off. apparently, the department of defense tracked this balloon from its lift off in hainan island, all the way the that to the united states. in the future, will probably communicate clearly, aggressively to chinese, you cannot loiter over the united states. and 60,000 feet and under
able, to recover much of the debris. which we will exploit. we ll study it, we ll learn from it. we also took advantage of the time that it was flying over the country to learn from the system itself, while it was in-flight. we collected on them while they were trying to collect on us. general, can you pull back the curtain for us, give us a sense of what the u.s. could learn from that debris? what the u.s. could learn from watching the movement of that balloon? i think much of the intelligence community, we have an incredible space borne intelligence collection capability ourselves. the chinese have more than 260 military satellites collecting on us. the chinese have an enormous human intelligence campaign against collecting united states. it s principled
president biden now saying that balloon was a violation of international law, but not a major security breach. the total amount of intelligence gathering that s going on by every country around the world is overwhelming, and the idea that a balloon could traverse great american air space is anyway, it s not a major breach. joining us now cnn national security correspondent tasha bertrand. natasha, those words from the president, not a major breach, consistent with the pentagon, saying that this balloon had surveillance capabilities but not significantly greater than satellites that are flying over. we re learning new details about its capabilities. what are officials telling you about how seriously they re taking this? essentially what we re learning is that the balloon was capable of intercepting communications, right, it had the signals collection
drifting towards the u.s. air space wasn t originally marked as urgent. and this has drawn ire from republican lawmakers already unhappy with how long it took for the u.s. president s order to shoot it down. here is what the pentagon had to say about the incident. i can assure you this was not for civilian purposes. that is we are 100% clear about that. based on what we know and have se observed, it was an intelligent collection capability. you know, a question i would ask myself is if in fact it was a civilian balloon, a weather balloon and it was approaching a sovereign nation about to enter their air space, a responsible nation would have put out some kind of public statement saying hey, head s up, this is heading your way, just want to let you know. prc did not to that. they did not respond until after they were called out. and on wednesday the director