could it have contained something within the balloon other than helium that could have posed a threat to us. do we know if it has any kind of biological component to it. so you want to ask those questions, and i think they were completely correct about this in terms of what the chinese may or may not do in the future. we need to find out as much information about this balloon we can to make sure we put chinese on notice, come again another time, and we know what to do. right here i think was really important to find out what kind of information were they gathering, were we able to intercept it, and i know we can take it down, and i think we can take it down in a fairly responsible fashion so it doesn t come crashing down. we have the capability to help move it down. if the chinese can move it from china, we can move it from here, and i m confident we can take it down. how would one bringt down? it s not just a balloon that
country. and that s something that people know about, that farmers know about that are on the ground in montana. we need to stop that from happening because it puts our national security and our food security at risk. they re both very much connected. senator tester, i appreciate your time tonight. thank you. you bet. thank you, anderson. joining us now, colonel adam k k k kinsinger. u.s. northern command are coordinating with nasa to determine the debris field if it were to be shot down. do you think it should be? i think the first thing is to make sure it doesn t get out of this country. i think it has to be brought down under control if at all possible, that the united states has to gather the information on that balloon, the equipment that was used and what its capability was.
frankly, i think senator is absolutely correct. he s approaching it the right way. let s get some real answers here. when did the military first decide this did not pose a military threat or national security threat. and secondly, were we able to hack into whatever technology is on board of that so-called aircraft? and were we able to take advantage and obscure what it was seeing? so i think there are a lot of issues to be raised here, but the most important thing when people call, just shoot it down, i would do that from a military point of view, but the first thing i would ask is the intelligence committee, what information do you have about their capability? if you have a spy taking place or someone in this country that s a spy that s about to leave, do you shoot him down or shoot that aircraft down or do you capture it and interrogate it and find out what the facts are and what needs to be done to make sure it doesn t happen
i think china knew exactly what they were doing, and we just have to make sure that they got no information from this balloon. so, i mean, at this point, do you know just on background, do you know details of when this thing entered u.s. air space, where it was launched from, anything like that? i don t know where it was launched from, but i do know the details of when it entered u.s. air space. but there s far more questions that need to be answered by the military, and we re going to get the right person in front of us to get those questions answered because i think this is a very serious matter that china has decided to do. like i said, we ve seen things happen in the indo-pacific. we ve seen things happen on the internet. we know there s a lot of stuff happening in space. now this is one more thing to add to china s list of bad behavior. what sort of questions would you like answered right away?