you re live in the cnn newsroom. i m jim acosta in washington. spy balloon down. a single missile took out a chinese spy balloon that floated across america s skies this past week. that dramatic sound just off the coast of south carolina earlier today. recovery efforts offshore are now under way as u.s. intelligence officials want to gain insight what china was up to. president biden said the order to shoot down the balloon came directly from him. on wednesday, when i was briefed on the balloon, i ordered the pentagon to shoot it down on wednesday as soon as possible. cnn has team coverage of this very tense moment in u.s./china relations. i want to start with warren lieberman who is over at the pentagon. what are you learning about the recovery effort that is gong on? i say sum that officials want to get their hands on it as quickly as possible. absolutelily. but the debris, what was left of the payload, the length of three school buses has fallen in 47 feet of water.
what they were doing and they took some prudent responses. i happen to have a friend who was the flight of rperations director, when the aircraft came down, it swas spread across 17 different rates. you know, you can t always plan on where debris is going to land, especially when it s coming down from 60,000 feet. i think, you know, this was a very good, thought out plan. the president, as you just said, made the decision on wednesday. but as i said in the last hour with you, they knew what they were looking at few days, if not weeks before this, as the balloon started covering over the bering see and over the allusion island chain? what do you think the chinese got out of the balloon? we heard that there were efforts