U.S. officials said Monday that a development ordered by President Joe Biden to bolster U.S. defenses against Chinese espionage contributed to the detection of the spy balloon last week, and to the identification of similar overflights at several locations during the Trump administration.
White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Monday that after taking office, Biden “enhanced the United States’ ability to monitor its regional airspace, and strengthen our ability to monitor things that the Trump administration could not detect.”
Speaking at the event hosted by the US Global Leadership Coalition, Sullivan noted that as part of those efforts, “we have studied historical patterns and uncovered multiple instances in which Chinese surveillance balloons violated US airspace and territory during the Trump administration. However, several Trump administration officials confirmed that they They didn’t know there were Chinese spy balloons during their tenure.”
US Defense Department officials have said that at least 3 balloons entered US airspace during the Trump administration and at least once more during the Biden administration.
Sullivan did not explain exactly how the United States managed to discover and track the latest balloon.
The officials said, without elaborating, that China has launched similar balloons over parts of five continents in recent years.
Sullivan defended Biden’s decision to wait until the blimp arrived off the coast of the Carolinas before shooting it down, saying that military advisors assessed that dropping it over water “would create a greater likelihood that the wreck could be exploited than dropping it on land.”
Some Republican lawmakers have criticized the president for not bringing down the balloon, though Pentagon officials have also warned of a potential danger to US citizens on the ground.
