following new details about that chinese spy balloon traveling across the country. new video into the cnn newsroom showing the balloon now hovering over asheville, and charlotte, north carolina in the last hour. and it could make it out to sea at any moment. the balloon was first spotted over montana on wednesday. china claims it s a civilian research vessel that blew offcourse, but the u.s. isn t buying that, calling the balloon s flight over u.s. soil an irresponsible act. secretary of state antony blinken postponing a planned trip to beijing in response. cnn s oren liebermann is at pentagon for us. oren, officials say the balloon doesn t currently seem to present a threat, but why is the pentagon also preceding with caution on it? reporter: so the pentagon has said for now that it will not be shooting this down, because of the risks from two different perspectives, first there s the risk to what s below, blow something up at 60,000 feet and that could be scattered over q
this week that their recommendation to president biden was not to shoot this down because of risk to people and property below. so this balloon made its way across a good chunk to have united states, from montana on tuesday and wednesday to where it is now over essentially north carolina where it s reaching the coast and open water beyond that where you no longer have the risk to people and property below. therefore, the question then becomes, does the military change its recommendation and recommend to president joe biden if you go ahead and follow the we ll take care of it, that will be the time and the place to shoot this down. it is worth noting, i ve been watching flight tracking websites pretty much all morning. there we ve seen some note worthy flight activity. a couple refuelling tankers right off the coast of myrtle beach essentially flying in a holding pattern. why is that note worthy? because fighters that could be used to shoot this down might need to refuel as th
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