Lawmakers are demanding more information about the suspected Chinese spy balloon shot down by the U.S. military last week and want the Biden administration to take action against Beijing for espionage activities, The Hill reported.
A senior State Department official on Thursday said the balloon was "capable of conducting signals intelligence collection operations" and was part of a fleet that had flown over "more than 40 countries across five continents."
"We know the PRC used these balloons for surveillance," the official said. "High-resolution imagery from U-2 fly-bys revealed that the high-altitude balloon was capable of conducting signals intelligence collection operations."
Administration officials said the U.S. didn't shoot down the balloon earlier due to fears of falling debris.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, during a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing Thursday with defense officials, said she's "angry the balloon wasn't shot down earlier.
"The fact of the matter is, Alaska is the first line of defense for America, right?" she said. "If you're going to have Russia coming at you, if you're going to have China coming at you, we know exactly how they come. They come up and they go over Alaska."
Murkowski later added: "Seems to me the clear message to China is, 'We've got free range in Alaska, because they're going to let us cruise over that.'"
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, echoed Murkowski's concerns.
"It defies belief that there was not a single opportunity to safely shoot down this spy balloon prior to the coast of South Carolina," Collins said during the hearing.
Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., questioned if the Biden administration had a plan "for when this happens again and what we're going to do and when we're going to do it?
"I don't want a damn balloon going across the United States when we could potentially have taken it down over the Aleutian Islands. I got a problem with a Chinese balloon flying over my state, much less the rest of the country."
John Ciorciari, the director of the Weiser Diplomacy Center at the University of Michigan, told the Hill the incident "makes it likely the U.S. accelerates different kinds of counterintelligence initiatives and expands to areas like, who do we grant visas to? Who is allowed to study at universities?
"An acceleration of those kinds of policies, the Chinese government will probably mirror," he said.
Ciorciari also said there will likely be more pressure to "limit espionage" by the U.S. government.
"The threat that I see is not so much the intelligence collection capabilities of the balloons," he said, but "where this set of episodes fit in the broader relationship."
The military is still attempting to collect balloon debris from the Atlantic Ocean.
Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
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