security concerns for days. most of the wreckage is believes to be sitting in 47 feet of water at this hour. let s go now to oren at the pentagon. do we think we might have get an update this evening as to whether or not they have been able to secure that wreckage and retrieve it? they ll put a perimeter around it with navy and coast guard assets that were in the area. whether they can retrieve it tonight or tomorrow, that s a different question. 47 feet of water according to a senior defense official, so not that deep, but still it s a question of what s left, what s down there and what shape is it in and how do you bring it up without damaging it further. salvage vessel is on the way. it might not be there in time to do it tonight, but it will get there as quickly as possible to begin. why is that so important? because the pentagon has said repeatedly this was a chinese surveillance balloon that had the ability to maneuver, loiter. and because of that, there s information
expend the political capital here. washington lost its collective mind yesterdayyester on this. e the chinese doch spyines on on . i think this goes back to maybe some kind of old cold war worryg about, you know, about th something kind of tangible looking up at us .n my houthe joke i had in my househa is that, you know, they art e kind of getting a preview of the next season of yellowstone, yellowstone. what a riot o send you outroun on the comedy circuit. well, the chinese e are laughing s at us , that s for sure.ur the role of the pentagon under r biden seems clear , unless we re talking about sending billions of weapons to ukraine. well, the pentagon s role is pretty much one of an observer. once it s over, a body of water, will you shoot it downf at the north american aerospace defensame command continuess to to monitor it closely. monit now?controlling this balloon right now? is the chinese government withrolling the movement of the balloon or is it just floating
any safety risks because there was an urgency here. this balloon is not armed, it does not pose some physical threat to the united states, even from an intelligence perspective. the chinese have much more effective ways of picking up intelligence from the satellites and otherwise. the fact that the president said what he said about taking care of it. now we have the physical fact that the balloon is heading towards the atlantic. these airports in north and south carolina are being closed for the moment. it does seem to set the stage and present an opportunity to have this shot down. it is really not a reversal. i think they ve been preparing for this and contingency planning. once it is not overland, it changes the calculus. general, weigh in for me if you will, you heard the presidents words there, we are going to take care of this. from your estimation, what is taking care of this look like and what are the risks and calculations going into that decision? i think what
announced. and it s basing agreements with the philippines. upping our game against china, and in fact the biden administration is continuing the trump administration policies on this. there actually is some bipartisan consensus on what to do about china in the future. all right mark polymeropoulos, you will stick with me hopefully. general steph twitty, you are sticking with me as well. so thank you for that. we are following this breaking news everybody, top of the hour. 3 pm here on the east coast. i am yasmin vossoughian, you are watching msnbc. we are taking a look at images of the chinese spy balloon that was spotted over the carolina coast. we have now learned just in the last ten minutes or, so that spy balloon has in fact been shot down over the carolina coast. seems as if in the atlantic ocean, we are gonna wear now from u.s. officials that they are currently gathering up the debris or attempting to gather up the debris. as i five conversation was general tweety a
you can see the piece on the bottom of it. that is the piece that gathers the intelligence for this what loan. we ve known about this being in the skies over our country illegally for several days at least. some say going back months. so far, we have not done anything to impede this balloon from collecting surveillance over the country even though it s of clear violation of u.s. airspace. no word from the president of the united states at 3:00 eastern time. we ve known about this since last night really. twice now he has avoided shouted questions. watch this. mr. president, when will you remove the balloon? when and how will you remove the balloon, mr. president? [question inaudible] are you worried about the balloon? martha: apparently not worried about the balloon as he walks across the lawn there. we know that it launched this instrument from china. you can see on that quick animation. maybe we can play it again from mainland china. now it has hovered over montana, h