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U.S. President Joe Biden will address the nation for the first time on his decisions to shoot down a Chinese spy balloon and three additional unidentified aerial phenomena over the last few weeks.
The remarks came after days of mounting pressure from both Democrats and Republicans in Congress, who say the American people deserve to hear from the president exactly what the administration knew about the spy balloon and why Biden later ordered three more floating objects shot down by American fighter jets.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Thursday that China, which levied sanctions against U.S. contractors earlier in the morning, was “deflecting and coming up with excuses and trying to spin this.”
“At the end of the day, their surveillance balloon was indeed in our airspace,” she said. “It’s been very clear. All of the American people, the entire world saw what China did, and it was irresponsible.”
The massive Chinese surveillance balloon was first detected in American airspace off of Alaska on Jan. 28, and was shot down on Feb. 4 in U.S. airspace off the coast of South Carolina. Floating visibly above the continental U.S. and Canada for eight days, the spy balloon caused an outcry, with both the public and members of Congress demanding to know why Biden had not ordered the balloon be shot down sooner.
Less than a week after the spy balloon was destroyed, the first of three more objects was taken down in waters above the Arctic Ocean on Friday. The size of a small car and floating at 40,000 feet, this object was much smaller than the Chinese balloon.
One day later, a balloon that was similar in size and altitude was shot down over the Canadian Yukon. The third floating object was slightly smaller and floating at just 20,000 feet when it was taken out over Lake Huron on Sunday.
As of Thursday, the White House says it has recovered key surveillance technology from the Chinese balloon. But it is not clear whether any debris from the three smaller objects has been recovered.
As more information came to light this week, the White House has sought to draw an increasingly bright line between the Chinese spy balloon and the three balloons that were shot down in its aftermath.
While the Chinese balloon was clearly a surveillance vessel, the “leading explanation thus far” for the other three “is that they were most likely balloons of a commercial or maybe research nature,” White House spokesman John Kirby said Thursday during an event at Georgetown University.
He said there was “no indication” the three latest flying objects were related to China’s surveillance program.
