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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 ....
Risk to what s below, blow something up at 60,000 feet and that could be scattered over quite a large debris field, so there is a risk to people and property. but they are keeping a very close eye on it. and are continuously monitoring this. as it makes its way across frankly much of the united states. like a scenic tour from the north west over montana to where it is spotted over the last hour or so, asheville, north carolina, charlotte, north carolina, some sightings there. so it is making its way on the east/southeast track. the other reason it hasn t been taken down yet, because they don t believe it has surveillance or intelligence gathering capabilities above and beyond chinese spy satellites which are constantly rotating around the earth and taking their own pictures of the united states. for that reason, the decision has been made at this point not to frankly shoot this thing out of the sky. president joe biden gave a request, with military options when it was spotted over mont ....