The Space Office of Peter Bergen. What is a spy balloon to tell us about a future American military officer/generic or generalized spy agency?

Peter Bergen is a national security analyst for CNN, vice president of New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. Bergen is the author of The Cost of Chaos: The Trump Administration and the World. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. CNN has more opinion on it.

And it reminded me that when my father, Tom Bergen, was a lieutenant in the US Air Force in the mid-1950s, he worked on a program to help send balloons into Soviet airspace.

In 1954 he was assigned to Headquarters Air Material Command at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio. The balloon project he worked on carried cameras over the Soviet Union. Turkey launched the spy balloons.

My dad did not talk much about this part of his career, but despite the fact that it was a secret, the program has been declassified for over seven decades.

This is the first time the FBI investigated a spy balloon and assisted with the processing of a scene, according to the officials. The officials stated that understanding the balloon’s components is vital intelligence and could be important pieces of evidence for future criminal charges.

The United States and other countries have gizmos called spy satellites that can take photos. They can do full-motion video! They are able to take thermal imagery that can help identify individuals at night. They can use the skies to spy on pretty much anything, with a resolution of centimeters.

If you buy your own close-up images of a Russian battle group in Ukraine, you will get an inexpensive commercial satellite image. Just ask Maxar Technologies; they have built up a rather profitable business on this model, which was just acquired two months ago for $6 billion by a private equity firm.

On the China-Ballistic Overflight by a High-Altitude Airship: How Do the Latest Strange Objects Above North America Get Their Own?

Republican politicians have implied that the overflight of US territory by the China balloon is not a national security catastrophe.

It’s possible that it could help explain a little-noticed report published by the US Office of Director of National Intelligence last month.

If they are not related to China, are the latest strange objects flying over North America linked to some other hostile power or group, corporate or private entity? Are they connected or are they coincidental at a time when awareness and tension are high?

But China has arguably done much worse. US officials have accused it of benefiting from the work of hackers who stole design data about the F-35 fighter aircraft as China builds its own new generation of fighters – and of sucking up much of the personal information of more than 20 million Americans who were current or former members of the US government when they reportedly got inside the computers of the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) in 2015. China called the F-35 theft report “baseless” and denied responsibility for the OPM hacking.

A senior US defense official told reporters the U.S. is able to track a balloon that is flying over sensitive areas and is confident that it is a Chinese balloon.

One official familiar with the intelligence said that roughly half a dozen have been within US airspace, not necessarily over US territory.

Balloons similar to the one found above Montana last week have been spotted in recent years above Japan, India and Taiwan. China admitted a high-altitude balloon found above Latin America this month was its own, though it said the balloon was a civilian airship doing weather research.

It was first reported by the Washington Post that the program was uncovered prior to the last balloon being spotted.

The photos from Sunday show sailors from a Navy explosive disposal team pulling debris from the deflated balloon onto a boat. The FBI lab in Virginia will analyze the debris recovered from the balloon crash as the US attempts to understand its capabilities.

Senior administration officials appear not to have been made aware of the balloon until on or near January 28, when it crossed into Alaskan airspace, including America’s top-ranking general, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley.

“Affected by the westerly wind and with limited self-control ability, the airship seriously deviated from the scheduled route,” China’s Foreign Ministry said on February 3. “China regrets that the airship strayed into the United States due to force majeure. China will keep communicating with the US to deal with the unexpected situation.

The United States does not have any evidence that the three objects shot down in North American air space are related to China’s spy balloon program, according to President Joe Biden.

This elite team consists of agents, analysts, engineers and scientists, who are responsible for both creating technical surveillance measures and analyzing those of the US’ adversaries.

The OBO is also responsible for managing court- authorized data collection and working to defeat foreign intelligence agency attempts to penetrate the US, but they are also used by the FBI to target national security threats.

But, according to one member of the House Intelligence Committee, “there’s number of reasons why we wouldn’t do that. We want to get rid of it, and you want to see what it is doing.

A defense official said the US has procedures – akin to a kind of digital blackout – to protect sensitive locations from overhead surveillance, typically used for satellite overflight.

But even amid the crossfire in Washington, Mr. Biden appeared determined not to further escalate tensions with China, hoping to resume a dialogue that was upended when the spy balloon was spotted over the continental United States. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken called off a trip to Beijing once the balloon’s presence was made public, and China’s defense chief then refused to take a phone call from Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III.

The balloon’s appearance earlier this month also prompted the U.S. to shoot down other “unidentified objects” in the sky, and sparked a fresh wave of criticism in Washington, with Republicans accusing President Joe Biden of not acting quickly enough or providing enough transparency.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets Wang Yi on a High-Altitude Supremacy Canopy for the Defense of the United States

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, on Saturday. The level of communication between the two countries has gone up since a Chinese balloon over the U.S. airspace.

Biden administration officials have stressed that the meeting was not canceled, but instead delayed until a later date. The date hasn’t yet been set.

The official said that China has been trying to explain why their actions were considered a violation of US sovereignty, despite the fact that there is no plausible explanation.

Biden administration officials have maintained they were able to move quickly to mitigate any intelligence collection capacity of the balloon and have countered that they will end up benefiting from the ability to collect information about the balloon and Chinese intelligence capabilities, both during its flight and in the recovery of its wreckage from the Atlantic Ocean.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise’s office said the chamber will vote Thursday on a resolution “condemning the Chinese Communist Party’s use of a high-altitude surveillance balloon over United States territory as a brazen violation of United States sovereignty.”

Republicans on Capitol Hill have criticized Biden for not approving the military to down the first balloon quickly enough, letting it sail eastward for days. They had also called on him to speak on the matter.

Mr. Blinken also renewed warnings that China should not assist Russia’s war effort in Ukraine, amid growing concerns that Beijing is inching closer to doing just that, including by providing satellite imagery to Russia’s private Wagner militia and electronics that might aid Russia in building military hardware.

The Navy released photos of its recovery effort of a suspected Chinese spy balloon that was shot down by the US on Saturday.

On Monday, Gen. Glen VanHerck, commander of US Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), told reporters that the balloon was roughly 200 feet tall and carried a payload weighing more than a couple of thousand pounds.

Ultimately, the object was downed near the Canadian border and northeastern Alaska by a F-22 fighter jet out of Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, equipped with an AIM-9X – the same aircraft and missile used to take down the surveillance balloon. The military waited to shoot it down during the day to make it easier for pilots to spot it. Ryder said the mission was “supported with aerial assets from the Alaska Air National Guard.”

If you are to picture a safety standpoint, think of large debris falling out of the sky. That’s really what we’re kind of talking about,” VanHerck said on Monday. “So glass off of solar panels, potentially hazardous material, such as material that is required for a batteries to operate in such an environment as this and even the potential for explosives to detonate and destroy the balloon that could have been present.”

“[T]his gave us the opportunity to assess what they were actually doing, what kind of capabilities existed on the balloon, what kind of transmission capabilities existed, and I think you’ll see in the future that that time frame was well worth its value to collect over,” VanHerck said.

Mr. Wang, according to that account, said it was up to the United States to “solve the damage caused by the indiscriminate use of force” when it shot down the large balloon off South Carolina.

Feb. 13: China hits back with its own balloon allegations, accusing the U.S. of flying its own high altitude balloons into Chinese airspace, without Beijing’s permission, on more than 10 occasions since January 2022.

Mao Ning, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said that China is a responsible country. “We have always strictly abided by international law. We have informed all of the relevant parties so they were aware of the situation and acted appropriately.

Why the High-Altitude Chinese Balloon Jumps Over US Territory Was Not an Emergency Event: A Political Blame Game For The President Joe Biden

Officials familiar with the original DIA report conceded Rubio’s point that they didn’t see the balloon as an urgent threat until it was already over US territory –  even as fresh revelations have emerged about what the US knew about Chinese spy balloons.

The report was disseminated through secret channels within the US government. But it wasn’t flagged as an urgent warning and top defense and intelligence officials who saw it weren’t immediately alarmed by it, according to sources. The report said the White House wasn’t made aware of the report, and that President Joe Biden was not briefed.

Instead of treating it as an immediate threat, the US moved to investigate the object, seeing it as an opportunity to observe and collect intelligence.

The political blame game is heating up. According to Turner, the Republican claims that Biden is failing to protect the southern border was related to the incursions of US air space. The critique of Biden was also novel given the claims that the president didn’t act quickly before.

On January 28, when the balloon entered US airspace near Alaska, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, sent up fighter jets to make a positive identification, according to defense officials, reflecting a subtle shift in urgency.

News of the intrusive Chinese balloon touched off alerts in the U.S. and beyond. When the Pentagon said last week that a similar high-altitude balloon had been identified over Latin America, China responded by saying it was another research balloon that was badly off-course, deeming it “an unexpected, isolated incident caused by force majeure,” meaning events beyond the country’s control.

Military officials said it is not necessarily surprising that the president was not briefed until January 31, given the expectations for the balloon at the time.

Congress is interested in information about the decision making process on the balloon.

Is the President Really Heavier than the State? Associated High-Fidelity Communications with the Presidential Airborne Balloon

“There are still a lot of questions to be asked about Alaska,” a Senate Republican aide told CNN. “Alaska is still part of the United States – why is that okay to transit Alaska without telling anyone, but [the continental US] is different?”

One pilot took a picture in the cockpit that shows the pilot and the balloon itself, which has gained fame in both NORAD and the Pentagon.

The Biden administration has determined that the Chinese balloon was operating with electronic surveillance technology capable of monitoring US communications, according to the official.

Sources familiar with the matter said that lawmakers were told Thursday that the balloon order was sent without the knowledge of the Chinese president.

Only evidence that was on the surface of the ocean has been delivered to FBI analysts so far, one official said, which includes the “canopy itself, the wiring, and then a very small amount of electronics.” The official said analysts have not yet seen the “payload,” which is where you would expect to see the “lion’s share” of electronics.

Gen. Glenn VanHerck said on Monday that there wasn’t a significant collection hazard beyond what already exists in Chinese technical means.

The sources said that several Republicans railing against the administration, including one who disliked the president, were present at the House briefing Thursday morning.

“The Pentagon was telling us they were able to mitigate in real-time as this was taking place and I believe that’s accurate,” Rep. Mike Quigley, an Illinois Democrat, told CNN.”I believe the preeminent concern they had, as they expressed in real time, was the safety of US citizens.”

“I believe that the administration, the president, our military and intelligence agencies, acted skillfully and with care. At the same time, their capabilities are extraordinarily impressive. Was everything done correctly? I can’t imagine that would be the case of almost anything we do. But I came away more confident,” Romney said Thursday.

A congressional briefing on the alleged China spy balloon over Alaska and the response of the Pentagon to the senators’ warnings about a possible military threat

The senators pushed the officials at the hearing, with one telling the officials that he did not know how they could say that it was not a military threat.

You need to help me understand why this baby wasn’t removed long before and because I am saying that this is not the last time. We’ve [seen] brief incursions, now we’ve seen a long incursion, what happens next?,” said Tester, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee.

In an interview with CBS news, Blinken said China was “considering providing lethal support to Russia” – a red line for Washington. Such a decision would have terrible consequences for our relationship.

The Defense Department was not worried about the balloon gathering intelligence over Alaska because it wasn’t close to sensitive sites.

The parts of the balloon that were found on the ocean have been delivered, but the pieces of the balloon that were sunk have not been recovered because of bad weather.

The officials said it was not known where the balloon’s parts were manufactured or whether any of them were made in America. Because analysts have yet to look at the bulk of the equipment on the balloon, the officials said that there has not been a determination as to everything the device was capable of doing and its specific intent.

Of the small portion they have examined, analysts have not identified any sort of explosive or “offensive material” that would pose a danger to the American public.

There was English writing on parts of the balloon that were found, one of the sources familiar with the congressional briefings said, though they were not high-tech components. The source didn’t provide much information on what part of the balloon contained English writing.

It was clear that the presence of this balloon in US airspace is a violation of American sovereignty and international law, and the PRC’s decision to take this action on the eve of my visit is detrimental.

As U.S. Navy crews continue to fish parts of the alleged Chinese spy balloon out of the Atlantic, a senior State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, gave reporters an update on Thursday on some of what has been learned so far.

One of the FBI officials said it was very early to assess how the device was doing, and that the main electronics payloads had not yet been recovered.

China’s balloon launches have failed to carry out the “war on the world,” said Mao at the Xinhua University

“That narrative is probably part of the information and public opinion warfare the U.S. has waged on China,” Mao added. The international community is able to see who the world’s number one country of spies, eavesdroppers, and snoops is.

The government is making improvements as well. In 2018, for example, China launched a project to research materials that can be used to make balloons that can float higher without losing buoyancy.

CNN reported on Thursday that the assessment was given to US lawmakers a day earlier, which could show a lack of coordination within the Chinese system at a fraught time in China-US relations.

Beijing, in a statement last weekend, appeared to link the device to “companies,” rather than the government or military – though in China the prominence of state-owned enterprises and a robust military-industrial complex blurs the line between the two.

Thompson is a research fellow at the NUS’ Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and said that the lack of delegation of authority to lower levels is a problem with the centralization of power.

That means that lower-level officials who may have the capacity to more closely monitor such missions may not be empowered to do so, or not be equipped to make political judgments about their impact, he said. Power struggles between lower and higher ranked officials could cause problems, he said.

There is tension within the system of Chinese governance in which lower levels fight for their own autonomy and upper levels fight for more control, he said.

Past crises in China have pointed to these tensions, including the outbreaks of both SARS in 2002-2003 and more recently Covid-19, where reporting delays were widely seen as having slowed the response and compounded the problem. Some blamed local officials who feared repercussions, or were accustomed to a system where information flows from the top down, not the bottom up.

Balloon launches could also fall into a gap in which operations were not managed or overseen in the same way as space or other aircraft missions, according to Dali Yang, a political scientist at the University of Chicago.

In this case, entities launching balloons may have received “little or no push back from other countries, including the United States” and “increasingly seen such launches as routine based on weather conditions and at modest costs,” Yang said.

“As a result, while the leaders of these programs have also become emboldened over time to test new routes, it was likely that they didn’t get top priority attention from the perspective of political risk,” he said.

The Shot Down of an Alaskan Object by a Chinese Surveillance Balloon and Its Implications on the Relations between the US and China

The Foreign Ministry said it was caught off-guard by the situation as it made public its first explanation after the Pentagon announced it was looking for a balloon.

Alfred Wong, an associate professor at the NUS Lee Kuan Singapore School of Public Policy, said that he wanted 100% control because of his personality. “I don’t think Xi Jinping allows for that kind of autonomy.”

Instead, the US domestic response to the postponement of the talks may have been underestimated, since it diverted attention from the public frustrated by a faltering economy, and could have been taken care of by the Chinese.

As it tries to keep the dialogue going, Washington may be saying that Xi wasn’t aware of the situation during the meeting between him and Joe Biden at the G20 summit.

The US announced in the afternoon on Friday that they had shot down an object off the coast of Alaska.

The US fighters have blasted three objects out of the sky since February 4 after the Chinese balloon was shot down off the South Carolina coast.

John Kirby said that he came inside our territorial waters but also within the territorial airspace and over the territorial waters. “Fighter aircraft assigned to US Northern Command took down the object within last hour.”

Kirby told reporters that the first fly-by of US fighter aircraft happened Thursday night, and the second happened Friday morning. Both brought back “limited” information about the object.

Ryder also emphasized that officials do not know the origin of the object, which did not appear to be manned, and that it was shot down because it posed a “reasonable threat to civilian air traffic” as it was flying at 40,000 feet.

“We’re calling this an object because that’s the best description we have right now,” Kirby said. “We don’t know who owns it – whether it’s state-owned or corporate-owned or privately-owned, we just don’t know.”

The Alaska National Guard and units under US Northern Command, along with HC-130 Hercules, HH-60 Pave Hawk, and CH-47 Chinook are all participating in the effort to recover the object, Ryder said.

Officials have given no indication so far that the object is at all related to the Chinese surveillance balloon downed last weekend, debris of which is still being recovered on the Atlantic Ocean floor.

Ryder said on Friday that recovery teams have “mapped the debris field” and are “in the process of searching for and identifying debris on the ocean floor.”

The lesson learned about the China balloon helped detect the object shot down over Alaska, but not everything is apples and oranges.

The Shot Down of an Airborne Object by an F-22 Warplane Over Alaska’s Lake Huron has Sensitive National Security Criterion

A deepening national security mystery is threatening a political storm after US fighter jets scrambled three days in a row to shoot down a trio of unidentified aerial objects high over the North American continent.

On Friday, an F-22 shot down another unidentified craft over Alaskan airspace . US pilots were able to get up around the object before it was shot down and reported that it didn’t appear to be carrying surveillance equipment.

The US leading the West in an effective war against Russia in Ukraine is just one of the reasons for the intrigue unfolding against a tense global situation.

“What’s gone on in the last two weeks or so, 10 days, has been nothing short of craziness,” Democratic Sen. Jon Tester of Montana said Sunday on “Face the Nation” on CBS, hours before an airborne object was shot down over Lake Huron.

A missile was fired into the air by the US F-22 warplane that was operating under orders from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and US Vice President Joe Biden. The Canadian Defense Minister described acylindrical object small compared to the Chinese balloon.

NORAD and the US Northern Command have taken against airborne objects over US airspace in the past, and recently objects shot down were likely the first of many.

There are serious national security and political questions that could only be assessed when more is known about the events of the last few days.

New speculation and criticism could be premature as officials work to understand the sequence of events. According to CNN, NORAD had adjusted the filters that it used to find fast moving objects below a certain altitude. A source briefed on the matter said that filters used to avoid picking up birds and weather balloons.

Turner told Jake Tapper that it was preferable to a permissive environment when the Chinese spy balloon was coming over some of our most sensitive sites.

How Fast Was the New Black-Tie? The State of the Affairs of the U.S. Senate Minority Leader Joe Biden

Biden, who didn’t address the new intrusions at a black-tie event with state governors on Saturday, has yet to speak to Americans in person about the trio of incidents over the weekend.

The assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and hemispheric affairs said that they have acted out of caution because they do not know what the objects are.

Mr. Biden was accused of being too slow in responding to the Chinese spy balloon, as well as being criticized for overreacting to the objects that appeared to be harmless except for civilians, even as he was also accused of being too slow.

They are getting a lot of positives that they haven’t gotten before. Kayyem, a former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, said most of that is going to be airplanes.

Is the bigger radar picking up stuff around in the skies because it doesn’t pose a threat or is it part of a bigger plan to gather intel on us?

There was more confusion on Sunday. After saying that he had been briefed by Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on ABC’s ” This Week” that the two objects shot down over Alaska were balloons rather than Chinese invaders.

Even if there is no confirmation of a connection between the Chinese balloon and the latest objects, it appears that Republican Rep. MattRosendale made a link between the Chinese balloon and the latest objects on CNN.

The Search for Agents behind the Closed Loops of the X-ray Binaries: Jean-Pierre’s Letter to the White House

“It doesn’t give me much safe feelings knowing that these devices are smaller,” he said. I am concerned about the data being collected. I need some answers, the American people need them.

There is absolutely no indication of aliens or extraterrestrial activity with these recent take- downs. I wanted to make sure that the American people knew that, all of you knew that, and it was important for us to say that from here because we’ve been hearing a lot about it.

White House press secretary Diane Jean-Pierre made it clear when talking to journalists on Monday that there will be no call for Agent Mulder and Agent schoo to come back.

Dec. 9: The U.S. Airborne Detector of the Beijing Blast-Blowdown Incident, Report from Washington, DC

One is that these have been going on before in the past, and we haven’t detected them. There have been detections where our radars have picked up various phenomenon. The equipment is not that refined and so we can’t say what it was that they detected. It cannot discern down to an exquisite level of detail what an anomaly in the air might be. Sometimes we’ll pick up weather phenomena which will indicate to us that a balloon or an aircraft is in the sky. It was a weather anomaly just in the atmosphere. New technologies could be used to correct some of this.

The crews were able to recover significant debris from the site, including the priority sensor and electronics pieces, as well as large sections of the structure.

The recovery operation included the use of a crane to bring up the large pieces of the blimp, which were kept aloft by a balloon.

Even before that shootdown, analysts urged the Biden administration not to allow the craft to return to China — both to limit the data it might convey, and to allow the U.S. to gain its own insights by recovering the equipment.

As for how the U.S. will handle cases of unidentified aerial objects objects in the future, Kirby said on Tuesday that the National Security Council likely will present new guidance by the end of the week.

A trade war, semiconductors, human rights: in recent years, the U.S.-China relationship has been rocked by successive geopolitical crises that have strained the dynamic between two of the world’s most powerful countries.

Feb. 9: The U.S. briefs diplomats from 40 countries about the Chinese balloon it shot down. On Capitol Hill, both chambers of Congress receive classified briefings on the incident. The House passes a unanimous resolution condemning China’s alleged surveillance of the U.S.

Emily Feng reported from Taipei. Lexie Schapitl reported from Washington, D.C. The report was made from Washington, D.C.

The highly anticipated meeting took place in Munich, Germany, while both attended the Munich Security Conference, according to Ned Price, a spokesperson for the State Department. The meeting comes at a time in which tension between the two nations has escalated over national security concerns.

Detecting and Maintaining Unmanned Airborne Objects in the U.S. After the Shootdown of the Chinese Spy Balloon

“I’m not going to go into any specific intelligence that we may have,” he said. “Again, we know this is a Chinese balloon and that it has the ability to maneuver, but I’ll just leave it at that.”

The speech by the vice president to the White House came after the president faced more pressure to be more transparent with the situation in Washington and his decision making.

Biden stressed that there was no evidence to suggest an increase in the number of objects in the sky. Although the most recent three objects are not threatening to the security of Americans, Biden warns that he will take them down if they threaten the safety of American citizens.

Biden ordered Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, to lead an interference team to review U.S. procedures after the U.S. shot down the Chinese balloon.

Moving forward, Biden says the administration will establish an inventory of unmanned aerial objects above the U.S. airspace, implement measures to improve the capacity to detect these objects, update rules and regulations for launching and maintaining objects and the Secretary of State will “help establish common global norms in this largely unregulated space.”

The Chinese spy balloon has been briefed on Capitol Hill by officials from the Pentagon, State Department and intelligence community.

The officials were reluctant to have the president speak about the objects until there was more information about the three downed objects.

The military advised against shooting it down because of it’s large size. It was the size of multiple school buses and it posed a risk to people on the ground if it was shot down where people lived,” he said. “Instead, we tracked it closely, we analyzed its capabilities and we learned more about how it operates. Because we knew its path, we were able to protect sensitive sites against collection. We waited until it was safely over water, which would not only protect civilians, but also enable us to recover substantial components for further analytics.”

The Taiwan Defense Ministry says a Chinese Weather Balloon Landed on the Outlying Islands of TAIPEI (Taiwan)

The president said that the U.S. placed restrictions on some firms that were in contact with the Chinese military.

“Our intelligence community is still assessing all three incidences. Biden said he would communicate the efforts to the Congress.

In an interview with All Things Considered, Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine said she did not find the Biden administration’s all-Senate classified briefing “very informative.”

So far, the Federal Aviation Administration and intelligence agencies have reviewed visuals from the fighter pilots who flew past the objects before they were shot down – visuals that were limited because of the high speed of the planes and the relatively small size of the largely stationary objects, Kirby said.

Kirby said that Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, has a set of parameters for making decisions about how to handle the objects shot down by U.S. fighter jets in the past several days.

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Taiwan’s Defense Ministry says a Chinese weather balloon landed on one of its outlying islands, amid U.S. accusations that such craft have been dispatched worldwide to spy on Washington and its allies.

The ministry said in a statement that the balloon was carrying equipment for a state-owned electronics company.

China frequently sends warships across the middle line of the Taiwan Strait and aircraft into the Taiwan air identification zone. Taiwan has boosted military purchases from the U.S., expanded domestic production of local planes, ships and submarines, and extended compulsory military service for all males.

Taiyuan Wireless First Factory Limited, a Taiwan-based company that supplies electromagnetic research equipment to the China Meteorological Administration, said it had not built the balloon

Reached by phone, a publicity officer at the company, identified in the report as Taiyuan Wireless (Radio) First Factory Ltd., said it had provided electronics but had not built the balloon.

The company that provided equipment to the China Meteorological Administration was called Taiyuan, according to the spokesman.

He said the balloon was probably set off from the coastal city of Xiamen with no fixed course.

Its deflation was likely a natural outcome of it having reached maximum altitude of around 30,000 meters (almost 100,000 feet), Liu said. Such balloons regularly fly over the Taiwan Strait but have only recently begun to draw attention, he said.

The defense ministry in Taiwan said the information was written in simplified Chinese on the mainland, rather than the traditional Taiwanese characters.

Washington is Taiwan’s closest military and diplomatic ally, despite a lack of formal ties, which were cut in 1979. Beijing protests strongly over all contacts between the island and the U.S., but its aggressive diplomacy has helped build strong bipartisan support for Taipei on Capitol Hill.

Biden hopes that the new rules will help determine between those that pose a risk to the public and those that don’t.

Beijing insists the balloon was for scientific research and that it wasn’t a mistake to shoot it down.

U.S.-China Relations After the Blast from the Balloon Incident: The View from a Foreign Ministry spokesman

It’s unclear how helpful a meeting between Blinken and Wang will be in stabilizing bilateral relations, given that both sides have dug in their heels on the balloon.

The U.S. can’t seek dialogue without taking steps to deepen the crisis, as a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said on Friday.

The United States description of the meeting, which continued diplomatic contact between Washington and Beijing after the balloon incident, did not reveal how Wang Yi responded. But a brief summary on official Chinese state media described an equally sharp exchange.

The handling of the balloon incident, which brought attention to how poorly the two countries have acted in the past, worried many delegates at the Annual Meeting of diplomatic, intelligence officials and lawmakers.

During his interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press”, Mr. Blinken said that the US would soon be providing new information to show that Beijing was considering giving lethal assistance to Russia.

That phrase was particularly notable given that Mr. Wang had said, during earlier remarks on Saturday at the conference, that “the Cold War mentality is back” in global affairs.

Danny Russel, a vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute, said that despite the pointed rhetoric the fact that the meeting occurred and that both sides could claim to have delivered their points on the spy balloon may help the two sides move on.

Mr. Wang’s entreaties came after China’s leader, Xi Jinping, ended his “zero Covid” policy this winter, paving the way for the country to step back into the spotlight on the world stage. The Chinese government wants to strengthen its ties with Europe as it deals with a slowing economy and is angry over China’s support of Russia.

In a U.S. summary of the meeting in Munich, Price said Blinken “directly spoke to the unacceptable violation of U.S. sovereignty and international law by the [People’s Republic of China] high-altitude surveillance balloon in U.S. territorial airspace, underscoring that this irresponsible act must never again occur.”

The two discussed other issues, including the war in Ukranian and North Korea’s firing of a missile into the sea of Japan.

Wang asked the U.S. side to acknowledge and repair the damage that excessive use of force caused to the China-U.S. relationship.

Earlier on Saturday, Wang sharply rebuked the U.S. for downing the Chinese balloon, describing its actions as “absurd and hysterical.” He stated in remarks at the conference that the incident doesn’t show American strength but the opposite.