• In – in terms of, you know, the balloon and – and the capabilities that it has, as you heard at the time, we were aware that it had intelligence collection capabilities, but it was our – it’s – and it has been our assessment now that it did not collect while it was transiting the United States or over-flying the United States. And as we said at the time, we also took steps – steps to mitigate the potential collection efforts of that balloon.

    Whether the balloon worked or not, they’re likely to want to say it didn’t work. What are they going to do, confirm that a foreign espionage worked?

    •  orbit   ( @orbit@beehaw.org ) 
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      31 year ago

      This is true and a good take. I’m just struggling to understand what they where really collecting that they wouldn’t have already been collecting by other means aka satellites and data interception.