The United States is still assessing the parts that were recovered from the balloon, and precautionary steps were taken in time to limit the intelligence value that it would be able to collect, Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said in a press briefing on Monday.
Responding to media queries on whether the balloon was able to transmit intelligence back to China, she added that the US took steps to protect its own military installations from foreign intelligence collection by taking preventive measures.
“So, on the balloon itself, right now, the FBI is leading, still assessing the parts that we were able to recover from the balloon. As we mentioned early on when we first started tracking the balloon, we do know that the balloon was able to be manoeuvred and purposefully driven along its track but is not going to get into specific sites it was able to hover over,” the Pentagon Spokeswoman revealed.
But what we did do is take precautionary steps to limit the intelligence value that it would be able to collect, and, you know, again, we took steps to protect our own military installations from foreign intelligence collection,” Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said during the press briefing.
Speaking further, the Pentagon spokesperson said that due to the immediate steps the US took at that point in time, “we were able to prevent transmission of certain aspects of our sites.”
On transmission back to the PRC and what was able to be transmitted back, she said, “I just don’t have further information for you at this time. As of right now, we’re still doing an assessment of what exactly the intel was that China was able to gather, but we do know that the steps that we took provided little additive value for what they’ve been able to collect from satellites before.”