White House won’t commit to shooting down future Chinese spy balloons
Christian Datoc
White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre declined to lay out the Biden administration’s plan for dealing with any Chinese spy balloons in the future.
Jean-Pierre faced several questions on the topic when traveling with President Joe Biden on Air Force One on Thursday. She was specifically asked if Biden would order any detected balloons traveling toward the country to be shot down before entering U.S. airspace.
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CHINESE BALLOON DESIGNED FOR INTELLIGENCE GATHERING, NOT WEATHER, US SAYS
“I’m not going to get into hypotheticals, but clearly, every event is going to be very different,” she responded. “As you’ve heard reported, there were three balloons during the Trump administration that were not shot down, right, that were able to move out of the U.S. continental air, and this one, this last one clearly was something different.”
“I’m certainly not going to get into how the intelligence community or the Pentagon moves forward with this program and how they assess,” she continued. “Just not going to get into details on any hypotheticals.”
The president largely avoided the most recent Chinese balloon incident during Tuesday’s State of the Union speech, but he did briefly vow to defend the country from any Chinese aggression.
“Make no mistake about it, as we made clear last week, if China threatens our sovereignty, we will act to protect our country,” he stated.
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You can listen to Thursday’s gaggle in full below.
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