Washington
CNN
—
The Chinese spy balloon that passed through the United States earlier this year was able to capture images and gather intelligence on signals from US military sites, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.
The balloon was able to transmit information to Beijing in real time, the source said, and the U.S. government still does not know for sure whether the Chinese government was able to erase data from the balloon as it received it. That raises questions about whether there is intelligence the balloon may have collected that the United States still does not know about.
However, the intelligence community has not been overly concerned about the information the balloon may have collected, the person said, because it is not much more sophisticated than what Chinese satellites are able to glean when orbiting over similar locations.
A US intelligence official told CNN on Monday that “while analysis of the high-altitude balloon wreckage is still ongoing, so far its flight over the United States does not appear to have provided any new critical information to the People’s Republic of China.”
The United States also knew what the balloon’s trajectory would be and was able to protect sensitive sites and censor certain signals before the balloon could pick them up, officials said.
As CNN reported, the U.S. intelligence community last year developed a method to track what it says is a fleet of these Chinese balloons operating around the world, controlled by the Chinese military.
The FBI is still examining the balloon, but so far authorities have been able to gather additional information about how the device works, including the algorithms used for the balloon’s software and how it is powered and designed.
CNN has reached out to the White House National Security Council and the Pentagon for comment. NBC was first to report the new information.
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The balloon first crossed U.S. airspace over Alaska in late January, before crossing Canada and descending into Montana, where it hovered for a few days, leading the United States to believe it was attempting to monitor sensitive military sites, such as Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana. It was eventually shot down by the United States off the East Coast on February 4, and the incident further escalated tensions between Washington and Beijing, including the postponement of a diplomatic visit to China by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
A senior State Department official said in February that while the balloon was hovering over the United States, it “was capable of conducting signals intelligence operations.”
Gen. Glen VanHerck, commander of U.S. Northern Command and NORAD, said at the time that the United States “has not assessed” that the balloon “presents a significant collection risk beyond what already exists in terms of the technical capabilities that the Chinese can exploit.”
The surveillance program, which includes a number of similar balloons, is partly conducted out of the small Chinese province of Hainan, officials told CNN. The US does not know the precise size of China’s surveillance balloon fleet, but sources told CNN that the program has conducted at least two dozen missions on at least five continents in recent years.
About a half-dozen of those flights took place in U.S. airspace, but not necessarily over U.S. territory, according to an official familiar with the intelligence.
China has claimed the balloon was actually a weather balloon that was launched off course, and the United States has been evaluating the possibility that it was not deliberately maneuvered toward the continental United States by the Chinese government, CNN reported.
Still, officials believe China retained some ability to maneuver the balloon. And once the balloon was over Montana, China appeared to take advantage of its position to hover over sensitive sites and try to gather intelligence.
This story has been updated with additional reporting.
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