that was happening on a senate flyout day. right after that came in view and started getting publicity, staff for at that point, the gang of eight were briefed. now we re finding out staff for the senate intel committee have been briefed. of course we don t have more details on what that briefing was on, what they learned, it s important to note yet again, lawmakers are out of town. it s friday but technically that s the equivalent of saturday and sunday for senators and house members who are not in session today, and frankly are supposed to be out of session now for the next few weeks because february is kind of a weird month with the schedule around here, and so i m wondering now at this point with another instance of an unidentified object shot down over the coast of alaska, if this is going to prompt folks to want to come back to town. i expect to hear they re going to want more briefings. the fact that there was one chinese supply balloon and it prompted, i think, three hearings a
0 president lula has to make. reporter: i wanted to follow up on a question i asked in september. in light of the chinese spy balloon incident does this administration consider chinese land purchases near u.s. military bases a national security threat? we are always concerned about potential foreign collection near or around our military sites, and you re right, last week is a good example of that. we take that seriously, whether that s terrestrial related or whether it s from the air. and i think i ll just leave it at that. reporter: would you work with congress to put in place legislation to prevent that we are always willing to work with congress to address our national security interests and threats as best we can. reporter: real quick, is there a time line for recovery of this object? you would have to talk to the pentagon. i don t know, guys, this just happened within the last hour and a half, and they re still assessing where this thing landed and the degree to whi
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republicans in washington are slamming the delay in response, calling this a win for china. i think the humiliation this week was inflicted by the chinese communist on the president. again, we should have shot down this balloon over the aleutians as opposed to letting it float all across middle america on its merry way. the idea that we were going to let this go all across america, let a supply balloon complete its spy mission before we shot it down, i m afraid is an embarrassment to the united states. the defense ministry is protesting the shooting down of that balloon, quoting it was a civilian unmanned airship. a spokesperson said in a statement that china reserves the right to use necessary means to deal with similar situations. our chief national correspondent jim sciutto is with us. thank you for being here. you ve been great covering all of this since it was shut down this weekend. what does that mean, necessary
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