Washington
CNN
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The Chinese spy who moved to the US earlier this year was able to visualize and collect some clues on US military sites, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.
The balloon was able to transmit information back to Beijing in real time, the source said, and the US government still did not know that the Chinese government could wipe the data from the balloon as it was received. Which raises questions about whether there was intelligence the balloon was able to gather that the US didn’t already know about.
However, the intelligence community is not yet concerned about the information collected by the balloon, the person said, because it is not particularly toxic to Chinese satellites as they orbit similar locations.
A US intelligence official said on Monday that “although the analysis of the high-altitude balloon remains to provide critical new insights into the People’s Republic of China.”
The US also knows what the path of the balloon is and will protect sensitive sites and censor some signals before the balloon captures.
As reported by CNN, the US intelligence community last year launched a method of tracking what it said was a pack of Chinese wolves operating in the Chinese military.
The FBI is still investigating the balloon, but as such officials have destroyed more information about how the device works, including algorithms for the balloon’s software and how it is operated.
CNN has reached out to the White House’s National Security Council and the Pentagon for comment. NBC is first to report of new intelligence.
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The wolf first crossed the Airspace of Alaska in late January before passing through Canada and going to Montana, where it is believed to be sensitive to military sensitivities, such as going to the Sensitive Military Susks, such as the Monaltana Air Force Base in Montana. In the end, the US shot down from the East Coast on February 4, and the incident was more understood tensions between a diplomatic suspicion of the State of the State.
An official State Department official said in February that, as the balloon floats in the US, it “has the ability to conduct signals intelligence operations.”
Gen. Glen Varock, the commander of the northern command and NorDo, said at the time that the US “ignored a very important technical aspect.”
The monitoring program, which includes several similar balloons, is in part apparently from the small Chinese province of Hainan, officials told CNN. The U.S. does not know the exact size of China’s monsoonal balloons, but sources told CNN that the program has covered at least five continents in recent years.
Nearly half a dozen of the flights were within US airspace, though not necessarily over US territory, according to an official familiar with the intelligence.
China maintains that the balloon was actually just a weather balloon thrown off course, and the US is investigating the possibility of inadvertent manipulation of the US mainland by the Chinese government, CNN reported.
However, China retains some ability to maneuver the wolf, officials believe. And when the balloon over Montana, China appeared to take advantage of its position in Loiter in sensitive sites and attempt to collect intelligence.
This story has been updated with additional reporting.