the biden administration to shoot down the balloon over the atlantic ocean. the federal aviation administration has issued a ground stop close airspace in north and south carolina until 2:45 p.m. eastern time. the balloon is currently floating over south carolina and moving southeast republican congressman anthony of the homeland security committee standing by with his reaction. but first lucas tomlinson is live at the white house with 30 tables unchecked details. good afternoon mike if you going to shoot down a chinese spy balloon over the atlantic that s exactly how you do it. you close airspace you launched fighters. that appears to be what happened are present biden spoke earlier indicated a decision had been made without offering specifics. [inaudible] earlier this morning on fox former defense secretary chuck said it s unlikely this bible it will make its way home. i do not have the pentagon is going to do with the president ultimately decides but once he gets out
absolutely. communist china is pushing the envelope so to speak. they see our leader as weak. he is not taken a hard line on defending us here in america and standing up to the chinese government. and now we are seeing they are actually sending balloons into our airspace. going over the nine states of america. arthel: you free some really strong concerns they are. can you pinpoint specifically what you are talking about so our audience will understand how you believe we are vulnerable? any of the information they have taken in this balloon in this bible and that s come over the united states as passover military bases. it has passover areas that we do not need to spy balloons coming over the nine states of america. the fact again that we had the opportunity days ago to take this out of the sky and joe biden and his administration did
they re going to use the excuse we do not to harm anybody or hurt anybody. look, actually the horses left the barn. all the information is scooped up by china it s a lot of information because that is a very slow loitering device. both are very, very good for that. but they get if you think about it is much much better than the satellite that is orbiting, a lot better. mike: how critical will be for the data collection equipment to the bottom of the equipment to be preserved so american officials can study it to see exactly what was being sent back to beijing? mike that is the reason why that carter hall is out there. what it is designed to do is recover the balloon, the package the sensor package once he gets on the water. my concern is can they get to the package? that information is, the pick up the sensor package clearly they can extract the information what kind of packages out there that the chinese has news but it is a
inside the white house this decision would ve been made in situation room by the national security council party full of counsel. not just the principles that would ve made the recommendation to the president, pass the reclamation of the national security adviser to the president. member the president always has national security team travels with them full-time 24/7. so when he gets up to camp david the team is ready to go they vtc it in. think the decision is made by think is going to be a just a period of time before they can take it down because to me all the indicators are there, all the details are showing right now. in general, if you are in the national security council right now what would you be most concerned about this information that is been sent real-time back to beijing to chinese military, chinese intelligence personnel as this balloon is made his way across the united states. mike the information they gathered is massive. the sensor package under that balloon is a
not necessarily what you do the or when you do it, but how is that process, how is it evolving. and they would be picking that up. even though it would with encrypted, there s an ability to decrypt information. it s not always encrypted information that is passed. so what they gather is this decision making process. and then at the national level what kind of reactions are we going to make and what reactions do we have. so i think it s kind of a cumulative effort not only what they captured technology, in the spirit of technology, but also in the spirit of decision making. so it was a win-win for china. this thing should have been taken out long ago. and i have said this repeatedly, watch how the balloon s coming down. i said all along that balloon was not going to go erratically down, it s going to the fall slow are. that s how those balloons do it. the concern is, okay, it should have been what happens with the sensor package. if you re going to shoot that thing down, be able to reco