China said a balloon spotted flying over the U.S. was a civilian airship used for weather research and was blown off course, despite U.S. suspicion it was spying. The discovery further strained already tense relations between Beijing and Washington.
Biden was first briefed about the Chinese surveillance balloon on Tuesday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters. She did not shed light on why the administration waited until Thursday to make its concerns public.
Ryder said it was at an altitude of about 60,000 feet, was maneuverable and had changed course. He said it currently was posing no threat. Pentagon officials said Thursday that one of the places it was spotted was over Montana, which is home to one of America’s three nuclear missile silo fields at Malmstrom Air Force Base.
Still multiple U.S. officials called the presence of the balloon “unacceptable” and said that message had been delivered by Blinken to Chinese State Councilor Wang Yi on Friday when he told them he was postponing his trip. Although the trip, which was agreed to in November by Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping at a summit in Indonesia, had not been formally announced, officials in both Beijing and Washington had spoken in recent days about Blinken’s imminent arrival for meetings on Sunday and Monday.
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