- On Saturday, the Pentagon scrambled a fighter jet to shoot down the Chinese spy ballon, which was equipped with intelligence-gathering sensors, over the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of South Carolina.
- The unmanned device was shot down two days after the Defense Department acknowledged it and a week after officials first identified it above the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Alaska.
- Biden and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin defended the administration’s delay in addressing the balloon, saying Americans could have been seriously injured if they had shot it down as it made its way across the continental United States.
