Senior Biden officials on Sunday night offered to brief key former Trump officials on newly discovered Chinese spy balloon missions during their tenure.
Three suspected spy balloon missions over U.S. airspace were discovered after Biden took office, clarifying that the discovery was not made until Trump had left office. Officials are not disclosing when or how those missions were discovered, citing the classified nature of the information.
Biden’s team has given no indication it will downgrade intelligence to make a public case that there were past examples of Chinese spy balloons above the U.S. from 2017 to 2021. At this point, all briefings will apparently take place behind closed doors.
The Biden administration believes the Chinese surveillance program has been deployed over five continents over the last several years, including similar surveillance operations over East Asia, South Asia and Europe.
On Sunday night it was reported that Congress was briefed of previous Chinese surveillance balloons during the Trump administration that flew near Texas and Florida.
Rep. Michael Waltz confirmed that “currently, we understand there were incursions near Florida and Texas, but we don’t have clarity on what kind of systems were on these balloons or if these incursions occurred in territorial waters or overflew land.”
The Department of Defense tracks “hundreds” of balloons every day, but they are typically not deemed a threat. Their presence close to or over the United States would not be brought to the attention of senior leaders unless their behavior was “completely out of the ordinary, like this one,” said one senior Pentagon official.
