Chinese Spy Balloon or ‘Civilian Device’? Here’s What We Know So Far

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By Katie Rogers and Zolan Kanno-Youngs

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration shot down a Chinese spy balloon on Saturday, prompting a diplomatic drama and raising questions about the next stage of an already tense relationship between the world's two superpowers.

The ordeal captured the attention of the nation on Thursday when U.S. military officials said they had detected a "high-altitude surveillance balloon" launched by China floating in the skies of Montana. The discovery prompted Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken to cancel a planned trip to Beijing.

On Friday, Chinese officials declared that the floating orb was a "mainly meteorological" balloon that had floated into American airspace, attributing the cause to "force majeure." A day later, when the balloon had finally made its way over the Atlantic Ocean, an F-22 fighter jet downed it with an air-to-air missile.

The development comes months after President Biden and President Xi Jinping of China met in a high-stakes summit in Bali, Indonesia, to declare that neither wanted the fierce competition between their two superpowers to erupt into conflict.

Here is what we know about the balloon.

NBC News reported on Thursday afternoon that U.S. military officials had been monitoring for several days what they had determined to be a Chinese-made spy balloon floating over Montana. The Pentagon held a news briefing hours later.

China's foreign ministry issued a statement that confirmed the balloon's origin but that disputed its alleged purpose.

"It is a civilian airship used for research, mainly meteorological, purposes," a statement on the ministry's website said. "Affected by the Westerlies and with limited self-steering capability, the airship deviated far from its planned course. The Chinese side regrets the unintended entry of the airship into U.S. airspace due to force majeure."

Mr. Biden was alerted by the Pentagon on Tuesday that the balloon was in airspace near Idaho. Pentagon officials advised against shooting down the balloon while it was over land because of the possibility of harming civilians.

"I told them to shoot it down," President Biden told reporters in Hagerstown, Md., on his way to Camp David on Saturday afternoon. "They said to me, ‘Let's wait until the safest place to do it.’"

The balloon is a big enough deal for the State Department to cancel Mr. Blinken's planned trip — the first by a Biden cabinet secretary to Beijing — without rescheduling it. When he canceled the trip, Mr. Blinken said the entry of the balloon was a "clear violation of U.S. sovereignty and international law."

A senior defense official said that surveillance balloons strayed into U.S. territory one previous time during the Biden administration and three times during the Trump administration. A senior administration official said that China had developed a fleet of balloons to conduct surveillance operations and that these balloons have been spotted over countries across five continents.

The made-for-cable-news spectacle illustrated how high the tensions are — and how much distrust remains — between Washington and Beijing.

"We’ve got an important but problematic relationship, which could get worse," said Richard N. Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations. "The main purpose of the trip was to put some guardrails on the relationship. To me, this highlights the need for that more than ever."

Navy divers were working to find debris of the balloon on Sunday for the nation's own intelligence-gathering purposes, Pentagon officials said. The recovery effort is expected to take days.

Officials have played down how much intelligence could be gathered by the balloon. They say it could gather about as much intelligence as a spy satellite.

The Biden administration intends to collect as much debris as possible, according to Pentagon officials. Pentagon officials do not believe the recovery effort will be too difficult, given the balloon was shot down in shallow water just off the South Carolina coast.

Officials would not say how large the balloon was, but the military sent several F-22 fighter jets into the skies of Montana to get an estimate: It is "sizable," according to the defense official.

On Thursday, ABC News reported that an official had described the balloon as the size of three buses.

Beijing was left defensive and angry over the United States’ decision to shoot down the balloon. The Chinese Foreign Ministry described the Biden administration's reaction to the balloon as "excessive" and indicated that Beijing could retaliate against the military action; the ministry noted that it "retains the right to respond further."

Mr. Blinken has not rescheduled his trip to Beijing. After ordering the downing of the balloon, Mr. Biden also ignored shouted questions on Saturday of what his message to China was.

China, which is dealing with myriad domestic issues of its own, may not want to drag out the dispute. Mr. Xi has tried to ease tensions with Western countries, concerned that they are building support to contain China's growth.

The relationship between the nations could come under even more stress, however, not because of a spy balloon but rather if Kevin McCarthy, the new House speaker, visits Taiwan.

Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this article misstated the title of Wang Yi. He is the Chinese Communist Party's top foreign policy official, not China's foreign minister.

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Katie Rogers is a White House correspondent, covering life in the Biden administration, Washington culture and domestic policy. She joined The Times in 2014. @katierogers

Zolan Kanno-Youngs is a White House correspondent covering a range of domestic and international issues in the Biden White House, including homeland security and extremism. He joined The Times in 2019 as the homeland security correspondent. @KannoYoungs

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