on us, and we see their actions since last fall have really picked up. it s important we realize this is the greatest strategic threat we re going to face in this century, and we shouldn t be surprised by chinese actions. you know, and there was the spy balloon over the united states there s that listening poster. i don t know how we re going to describe it in cue ba there s a supply balloon that flew over latin america, colombia, spotted seeing that. what s the internal calculus among u.s. intelligence officials on this type of story, china s ever growing presence with spy balloons and listening posts in latin america i think they see it as part of china s expansion as a power, growth as a power, and as a military power, an economic power, and also with intelligence, you know, capabilities the one thing i would say is the balloon is probably not at the
it was a very carefully worded denial. then on saturday in you re reporting with the team, the nsc issued a clarifying statement. that s right. really a reversal. they said it was inaccurate initially then they said it was actually something that s been there for years. that there s been this base for years, since 2019, that they inherited the problem. it s interesting because it s similar to how they phrased the situation with the supply balloon. when that happened, they said we inherited this chinese had beeng these surveillance balloons for years prior to ars coming into office. they re opening themselves up to accusations that they re playing these things down because they want these talks to happen and lincoln, of course, schedule to go to beijing later this month. in fact, very, very soon.
the president with the recommendation of military leaders directed them to be taken down. and chris, i think the biggest highlight from the briefing underscores how unprecedented the motion is. how seriously the biden administration is taking it. you heard peter touch on it there is, they re announcing the creation of the inter-agency task force to better prepare for more unidentified objects to be identified in the future, how to improve surveillance of them, departments within the united states government. with john kirby saying that really the increase this surveillance since the chinese supply balloon could be the reason why we re seeing this uptick in the number of them being shot down versus the thinking of whether there is possibly an uptick in just the general number of these unidentified objects entering u.s. airspace. i also thought it was interesting that he gave that update on the fact that there really isn t a time line expected for when all of this debris from these fou
was first spotted by members of the public by us. and he was very critical that he wasn t even kept in the loop as to what was going on. i think you saw senator lisa mur camurkowski of alaska. they did seem to learn its lesson from last week. and juliette, what do you make of this latest object? what do you think it was? who maybe behind it? and the fact that it s much smaller, the size of a car compared to three buss, which was the size of of the chinese supply balloon. what do you think this is? we don t know yet. given its altitude, it to be taken down because it was a threat to commercial aviation. that was a key factor in the risk calculation that the military made about the balloon in terms of was it a threat.
days. now even though we know that the timeline was different here and how the administration handled it was different, there s a lot of unanswered questions. we heard from john kirby they don t know exactly what this object is. they can only call it an object they don t know who owned it, whether it was state owned, privately owned or what the reason was for it to be in u.s. air space. what its intention was or whoever sent it what their intention was. so the recovery efforts are underway here. and we are hoping to learn more about what it was doing here in the u.s. also we re hoping to learn more from the administration about their next steps forward and what they hope to do in response. jasmine, appreciate your reporting. thank you. let s get sol perspective. welcome to you both. president biden acted pretty quickly and forcefully with this unidentified object with the chinese supply balloon he was