Spy balloon part of China's 'larger intelligence-gathering program', claims White House

US National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications John Kirby revealed that the recent Chinese Spy balloons which flew over the US airspace were part of China’s larger Intelligence-gathering program. On Monday, the US official along with the White House Press Secretary addressed the American media about where the Biden administration stands over the Chinese spy balloon issue. In the Monday press briefing, Kirby spoke to a great extent, about the Chinese intelligence capabilities. He also talked about how US president Joe Biden insisted that the US intelligence community should do a broad assessment of Chinese Intelligence capabilities.    

"I think for reasons you will all understand, we cannot publicly go into many details about how we discover and counteract foreign intelligence collection efforts, because much of what we have done and are doing is, of course, sensitive,” Kirby said in the Monday press briefing. “But we were able to determine that China has a high-altitude balloon program for intelligence collection that’s connected to the People’s Liberation Army. It was operating during the previous administration, but they did not detect it. We detected it.  We tracked it.  And we have been carefully studying it to learn as much as we can,” he added. The US official also touched upon President Biden’s intention to look into Chinese intelligence capabilities. “When President Biden came into office, he directed the U.S. Intelligence Community to do a broad assessment of Chinese intelligence capabilities and to ensure — and to ensure that we were working to detect and to protect against them,” Kirby told the reporters present at the press briefing. 

‘Balloons provided limited capabilities to PRC’: Kirby 

In the Press briefing, the US official made it clear that after a thorough assessment, it was found that the Chinese Spy Balloon, was of “limited” intelligence capabilities. “We assessed that, at this time, these balloons have provided limited additive capabilities to the PRC’s other intelligence platforms used over the United States,” Kirby said. However, the communications coordinator also mentioned that in future, such technologies possessed a threat to US security. “In the future, if the PRC continues to advance this technology, it certainly could become more valuable to them,” he added.  The saga of the Chinese spy balloon started when earlier this month, a giant spy balloon was found hovering over the US state of Montana, violating the US airspace. This eventually led to the detection of another spy balloon and several other unidentified objects flying over North American airspace. The recent incidents also increased the animosities between China and the United States.