On September 17, Gen. Mark Milley, Biden's chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told CBS News that the Chinese spy balloon that had drifted over the United States between January and February was unable to spy on Americans or U.S. government and military assets.
"...there was no intelligence collection by that balloon," Milley said, citing an assessment from the U.S. intelligence community.
But now, according to fresh reporting from NBC News, it turns out that wasn't true — and the Biden administration knew as much and sought a FISA warrant to surveil the balloon and its communications with its operators in China as it sailed across the United States.
On 9/17, Gen. Milley insisted the spy balloon didn’t collect any intel.
— Michael Sobolik (@michaelsobolik) December 29, 2023
Biden admin officials have said the same.
Now, nearly a year after the incident, NBC learns that the balloon used a U.S. telecom network to “send burst transmissions, or high-bandwidth collections of data…
In a move similar to stealing a neighbor's wifi, the Chinese Communist Party's surveillance craft "used an American internet service provider to communicate" with its home base by sending "burst transmissions, or high-bandwidth collections of data over short periods of time."
As had been previously disclosed by senior Biden administration officials, the balloon was determined to have been "loaded with equipment to collect signals intelligence" with "multiple antennas, including an array most likely able to collect and geolocate communications," NBC News reminded. Anything the spy balloon collected, then — in light of this new report — was apparently sent back to China in "burst transmissions" using an American company's infrastructure.
But there was "no intelligence collected," eh Milley?
Via NBC News:
The Biden administration sought a highly secretive court order from the federal Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to collect intelligence about it while it was over the U.S., according to multiple current and former U.S. officials. How the court ruled has not been disclosed.
Such a court order would have allowed U.S. intelligence agencies to conduct electronic surveillance on the balloon as it flew over the U.S. and as it sent and received messages to and from China, the officials said, including communications sent via the American internet service provider.
The company denied that the Chinese balloon had used its network, a determination it said was based on its own investigation and discussions it had with U.S. officials.
NBC News is not naming the provider to protect the identity of its sources.
According to the story the "previously unreported U.S. effort to monitor the balloon's communications could be one reason Biden administration officials have insisted that they got more intelligence out of the device than it got as it flew over the U.S."
Still, the Biden administration allowed the CCP spy balloon to maneuver across Alaska and most of the continental United States — apparently also connecting to an American internet provider in order to send data and communications back to China — before shooting it down. The White House called Biden's response to the balloon "decisive," but as more information comes to light it seems as though he was again playing a game of wait-and-see.
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