Chinese spy balloon didn’t collect information while flying over U.S., Pentagon says

The Chinese balloon that flew over the U.S. earlier this year did not collect any information before it was downed off the coast of South Carolina, the Pentagon told reporters Thursday. 

As the balloon flew down into the continental U.S. from Alaska and to the East Coast, the U.S. military took action to buckle up sensitive sites to limit the intelligence the balloon could pick up, the Pentagon said. 

“We believe that it did not collect while it was transiting the United States or flying over the United States and certainly the efforts that we made contributed,” Pentagon Press Secretary Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder said during a press briefing on Thursday. 

The debris of the balloon was collected after a fighter jet shot it out of the sky on Feb. 4 off the coast of South Carolina, and has since been under review by U.S. intelligence agencies to determine its equipment and what, if anything, it collected. The analysis is ongoing. 

Ryder did not confirm reports that American-made equipment was part of the balloon, but he said that in the past, Chinese drones and other capabilities have had off-the-shelf American equipment. 

The balloon’s overflight of the U.S. contributed to the pause in high-level meetings between the U.S. and Chinese officials, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken postponed a preplanned trip to China amid the diplomatic fallout. Blinken only recently completed a trip to Beijing. 

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was unable to get his Chinese counterpart on the phone during the incident and still has not officially had a meeting with him.