New tonight, the U.S.
military failed to flag an early warning about the Chinese spy balloon
as an urgent matter as it headed towards the United States.
Sources say top defense and intelligence officials who saw the internal alert
on January 27th weren't immediately alarmed by it.
It was the day before the balloon crossed into Alaska.
The urgency inside the military did not change until the spy balloon
moved over Alaska and headed on a path clearly towards the continental U.S..
That is when fighter jets were scrambled.
Now, all of this news coming a day after President Biden called out the Chinese
President, Xi Jinping during the State of the Union address.
Let's be clear.
Winning the competition should unite all of us.
We face serious challenges across the world.
But in the past two years, democracies have become stronger, not weaker.
Autocracies grown weaker, not stronger.
Name me a world leader who changed places with Xi Jinping.
Name me one name me one
Selina Wang is OUTFRONT in Beijing.
Selina, pretty incredible, right, Naomi?
What did the passion, the force behind that pointing?
And how was that seen by Xi Jinping and the Chinese government?
What's the response
Yeah, Erin, I mean, that was probably one of the most fiery parts of the speech.
He was practically shouting by the end of it.
And Beijing's response to the speech has been that the US is smearing
China under the, quote, pretext of competition.
And so really, in addition to directly calling out Xi Jinping,
Biden had also really underscored for this rhetoric
that autocracies have grown weaker around the world.
And we've seen his administration
really pose this challenge as autocracies versus democracies.
Now, China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
in response to the speech, also said that they don't want the entire US-China
relationship defined by competition from Beijing's perspective.
That speech underscores our view.
America is trying to keep China down and contain its rise.
They really see Biden
as building on top of former President Donald Trump's harsher stance on China.
They've seen the Biden administration drop these broad new laws and policies
that challenge China's influence, for instance, those sweeping restrictions
from the Biden administration that chokes off China's access to advanced
computer chips and stronger alliances between the US and other countries
that they see as anti-China.
Interestingly, also during a speech, Biden talked about investing
in semiconductor production at home, bringing back supply chains.
Beijing accused the US of undermining global supply chains Erin.
All right.
So anyway, thank you very much. Live from Beijing.
And I want to go now to the retired Army Lieutenant General Mark Hertling.
And General Hertling, you know, the context around this is all this
new reporting we're getting on these five balloon
I guess, for lack of a better word program of China.
The State Department confirming today
that this Chinese surveillance program extends far beyond the United States.
What more can you tell us about it?
Well, you know, first,
Erin, I go back to what you said at the very beginning about the military
failing to flag the balloon going over Alaska as an urgent matter
I'm not sure I agree with that.
You know, the temper that some of our reporters talked about in a recent article
in dot com talked about information that was provided to the command
about this balloon coming across the Aleutians and going into Africa.
Now, I hate to do this to you, Erin, but I'll give you a little
hierarchy of military information and organizations.
There is an organization called Alaska Command in it's near Anchorage, actually,
and they have a responsibility as part of Northern Command, the command that
eventually shot down this balloon of kind of guarding the coastline.
They have an Air Force base with the 11th Air Force there.
They have 18 different radar stations.
So when a balloon like that comes over, they're going to tip on it
and send that into the Defense Intelligence Agency.
So it goes out in something that I, as a commander and all other
commanders get on a daily basis, call a black book.
And until something becomes important, you don't do anything about it.
The military has a phrase called owner observe and report.
If there's a danger associated with something, then you do something about it.
But when you're just observing it and tracking it and they had fine
control of this as it moved, it crossed Alaska, then into Canada,
a different nation and coordination with Canada then into the United States.
I think that's when it started to rise to the level that
the Joint Chiefs of Staff heard about the intelligence.
And then the president eventually did
right and of course, now they know the signature of it.
It appears that this had happened multiple times before.
I'm sure there's a lot of questions being asked right now.
And one of the ways
that they're going to get some answers, perhaps, is by seeing the payload,
which, of course, landed off the South Carolina coast when they took it down.
Now, we understand, General, that the U.S.
military has recovered most of the debris now from the surface.
They're now going to the underwater wreckage
to try to get everything they can.
Right, because that's the whole point. You're going to take it down.
You want any information you're able to get.
What are you hearing about what we might learn about
the balloons capability from what's now sitting at the bottom of the ocean?
Yeah, I'm hearing we're learning a lot.
Now, of course, Erin,
I have to comment that I don't have classified clearance anymore,
but I am hearing from some of my friends in the Navy, in the Air Force,
and they're talking about the kinds of things they're finding.
So not only was this this balloon jammed
and tracked across the United States to it could not collect data,
but the data collectors that did have on board, we're really looking
at electronic surveillance and signal server surveillance.
And it was a big platform,
but it was jammed the entire time it was going across the United States.
So we learned a lot about what it was trying to report back to China.
Also the fact that it certainly was not a weather balloon.
But as we collect the data from the ocean floor,
off the coast of Carolina and the Carolinas,
I think we're going to learn a whole lot
more about the equipment that the Chinese used.
And by the way, this this gave us a whole lot of information
on a lot of the other balloons that they're using
in other areas of the world to include and most importantly, Taiwan.
Yeah, absolutely.
All right, General Hertling,
thank you so much and for sharing all that new information.
Much appreciated.
Pleasure.