Lack of destruction data leads to (sometimes) crazy theories

WASHINGTON (AP) — With few confirmed details from the White House, the downing of three unidentified aerial objects in as many days by U.S. warplanes has sparked wild speculation about what they were and where they were from. were coming. It even led the presidential press secretary to say on Monday that there was no indication of “extraterrestrial activity.”

US President Joe Biden held no public events on Monday and offered little explanation, following the discovery of a Chinese spy balloon crossing the country and the unprecedented peacetime shootings that took place. are produced.

US officials said they have little information about the three objects, which were shot down first off the Alaskan coast on Friday, then over Canada on Saturday and finally over Lake Huron on Sunday. But the shootings were part of a stronger response to aerial phenomena following the balloon incident blamed on a Beijing spy program.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre issued a blunt statement in an attempt to quell the unchecked theories: “I know there have been questions and concerns about this, but there is no There is not, I repeat, there is no indication of extraterrestrials or extraterrestrial activity.

The US government insists that none of the three objects posed a threat to the country’s security and that even the huge spy balloon provided “limited additive capabilities” to other Chinese surveillance programs. However, they were shot “out of an abundance of caution,” said National Security Council spokesman John Kirby.

Biden’s unprecedented decision to shoot down four objects flying over North America in eight days — combined with efforts by U.S. officials to publicly downplay the foreign threat — has fueled dissonant messages being sent about actions to protect the homeland.

US officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, acknowledged the confusion, saying the administration wanted to keep the American public from worrying unnecessarily while trying to maintain a tough stance on China.

Kirby said that while the United States has no particular reason to suspect the aerial objects were spying, “we can’t rule it out.” He added that the most recent objects, flying between 20,000 and 40,000 feet (6,000 and 12,000 meters), could have posed a distant risk to civilian aircraft.

Some officials consider the legal justification for the shootings – that the objects could endanger civilian flights – to be such a long-running possibility that it raises questions about whether it was merely a pretext for further action. hard.

Biden “wants to get tough on China, and this is a good example that actions speak louder than words,” said Brian Ott, co-author of The Twitter President: Donald J. Trump and the Politics of White. Rage”.

“If we end up in a presidential debate between the two of us next year, Trump will try to paint Biden as weak on national security, and Biden may turn to Trump and say, ‘How many of these Chinese, unidentified balloons of the objects ? Knocked you down?”

Ott, a communications professor at Missouri State University, noted that Biden’s relative silence on the fall of the Chinese globe and other objects could be directed, at least in part, toward his potential re-election in 2024. Republicans have criticized Biden in the days after the Chinese balloon was detected in US airspace for being slow to act.

When asked if the decision to demolish the objects came in response to this criticism, Kirby insisted that “these were decisions based purely and simply on the best interests of the American people.”

With little new information, senators from both parties demanded answers when they returned to Washington on Monday.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced that senators would receive a confidential briefing Tuesday morning and that Congress would work in the coming weeks to get “the full story of what happened.” Sen. Dick Durbin, the second-ranking Democrat behind Schumer, said Biden “owes the country some answers.”

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell noted that Biden “needs to communicate and be honest with the American people.” He asked what the government knew about Chinese espionage before the first balloon flew across the country.

After the balloon fell, the White House revealed that such balloons had crossed the United States at least three times during the Trump administration, without the knowledge of the former president or his advisers, and that others had flown over dozens of nations in other countries. continents. Kirby stressed on Monday that they had only been detected by the Biden administration.

Jim Ludes, a former national defense analyst who now directs the Pell Center for International Affairs and Public Policy at Salve Regina University, said political simulation was inevitable.

“It doesn’t matter what the government says. People will play politics with it and try to score points. They will always say ‘they moved too slowly or too fast’.

The Biden administration has good reason to be cautious, Ludes added, noting that the melee over aerial devices comes amid heightened tensions between China and Taiwan. A false statement from Biden could destabilize an already tense situation.

“The next time we fly a B-52 across the strait, what will China do?” Ludes asked. “There are opportunities for it to get very complex very quickly.”

On Monday, Kirby attempted to distinguish between the final objects and the confirmed spy balloon, noting their much smaller size, lack of maneuverability and lack of any indication that they had communication links before they were shot down. . They were only detected, he said, because the United States had adjusted the sensitivity of air defense radars to detect high-altitude, slow-moving objects, such as the spy balloon.

Officials have yet to recover any part of the three unidentified objects, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said, citing the dangerous terrain, water and weather where they were shot as the cause. US officials have not even been able to determine whether they were balloons or another type of aircraft and have so far refused to share footage taken before they were shot down.

What is clear, or at least it seems, is that this is not extraterrestrial activity.

Kirby echoed what Jean-Pierre said about it: “I don’t think the American people need to worry about extraterrestrials when it comes to these objects.”

___

Associated Press writers David Klepper and Tara Copp contributed to this report.