We all heard about the spy balloon in the sky that went across the entire country, as it turns out that balloon did transmit information back to China. The balloon was able to transmit information back to Beijing in real-time, the source said, and the US government still does not know for sure whether the Chinese government could wipe the balloon’s data as it received it. That raises questions about whether there is intelligence the balloon was able to gather that the US still doesn’t know about.
Still, the intelligence community has not been overly concerned about the information the balloon was able to gather, the person said, because it is not much more sophisticated than what Chinese satellites are able to glean as they orbit over similar locations. The US also knew what the balloon’s path would be and was able to protect sensitive sites and censor some signals before the balloon was able to pick them up.
As CNN has reported, the US intelligence community last year developed a method of tracking what it says is a fleet of these Chinese balloons operating across the globe, controlled by the Chinese military. The FBI is still examining the balloon, but so far officials have been able to glean additional information about how the device worked, including the algorithms used for the balloon’s software and how it is powered and designed.
It is part of a surveillance program, which includes a number of similar balloons, is in part run out of the small Chinese province of Hainan, officials told CNN. The US does not know the precise size of the fleet of Chinese surveillance balloons, but sources tell CNN that the program has conducted at least two dozen missions over at least five continents in recent years.
