The White House abandons the theory of the Chinese origin of the devices shot down over its airspace.
The U.S. government is considering the possibility that the last three objects shot down over its airspace belong to the commercial or scientific field, leaving the hypothesis of their Chinese origin in the background.
White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre detailed to the press that the Intelligence services are considering as an explanation that the objects identified in U.S. airspace are linked to commercial or research entities, and that they are benign in nature.
“It is something that the intelligence community is investigating,” Jean-Pierre said, stressing the importance of getting the remains of the objects for analysis — a difficult activity in recent days, as some of the objects would have fallen in areas that are difficult to access, according to the spokeswoman –.
Earlier, the U.S. presidential national security spokesman, John Kirby, had initially cleared Beijing of any involvement in the last three targets, pending analysis of the wreckage. “We can’t say definitively,” he said, reiterating the importance of finding the wreckage.
It depends on these investigations to determine the origin of the objects and their mission, since Washington did identify as Chinese a first balloon shot down over the Atlantic Ocean after crossing the entire continent. Beijing confirmed that it was theirs, but claimed that it was only for scientific purposes and not for espionage.
The Chinese government, on the other hand, has returned the accusations and has assured that US balloons have violated on more than a dozen occasions in the last year the airspace of the Asian giant, an extreme that the American authorities have flatly denied.