Page 776 - Balloon News Today

It could remain for several days. nbc news has learned tonight that the u.s. is taking precautionary measures to weaken the balloon surveillance capabilities, including these encounter intelligence measures to obscure its views and physically moving things out of its path. and we do not know exactly what it is doing out there but. we can guess. the pentagon would not get into specifics and said that it is manoeuvrable. and typically spy balloons flyover sensitive areas to collect information. to...

That seems to imply destroying it. but you are saying it would be more prudent from the intelligence standpoint to have it come down, to have it intact to study and know exactly what it is, what its been transmitting and the capabilities? >> exactly right. you want a controlled descent. if you are lucky you get into the data stream that controls the balloon and make it land on your command, not on the command of the controller in china. and when you do that, you bring it down easily. you can exa...

Power grid. so its not an inconsequential fact that this balloon has been isnt to fly over the continental united states. >> general, thank you so much for your expertise. we appreciate it. >> have a great day. thank you. now to the question of what to do about china. joining me is gordon change chak. hes a columnist for "newsweek." hes written several books. nice to have you book. what do you make of the fact that the chinese acknowledgeds at least that it is theirs? that seems out of charact...

Take possession of this. >> youre talking about some possible cooperation with china, because if they can control it, theyre going to continue to take control. the second option you talked about when you said aside from shooting it down, taking it down. how do you do that? is there some way to have a net that is able to grab hold of it by use of some fighter jets? what are the options? >> we could likely jam chinas capacity to control the balloon. so then they lose operational control of it and ...

The most wide open spaces? are they waiting for it to fly off the east coast and then shoot it down? there better be a plan, because i know our viewers right now are watching saying, this is insane. this is exactly, its impotence on display. its a challenge from the chinese to see what we would do, a probe, and all we do the is not send our weak secretary of state to beijing? rachel: yeah. thatll teach em. governor grege an forte from montana was on just earlier, and he says this is appeasement....

The alleged Chinese spy balloon is 60,000 feet in the air.

>> when you took these photos, how far was the balloon -- do you have a sense of what altitude the balloon was at? >> well, of course you know being an avid photographer of planes, it was much higher than your standard planes, at least 50-60 thousand feet. even the size of it, you could barely make it out to the naked eye. >> the military said about 60,000 feet. so you could see it with the naked eye? >> correct. you could see the actual balloon, and if the sun was shining just bright enough, yo...

And im like, look up. theres that chinese balloon everyones talking about. im not the only one that saw it. there were a lot of others that saw it as well. >> its really fascinating. matthew smith, i appreciate it. thank you so much. >> thank you so much. >> our next guest, democratic senator john tester. senator tester, appreciate you joining us. you have been raising warnings about china and spying and the threat china poses to the united states. do you think the u.s. should shoot this thing d...

Neil: 3.4% thats the unemployment rate right now its cap back to the early days of richard connection when he was president 1969, same year he went to the moon neil armstrong landed on the moon walked on the moon and one small step for man, of course you remember all that. thats the last time had a jobless rate does blow. five and 17 more jobs added to the economy. this time good news was treated as good news but to a point the market sought a very good week helping may be goldilocks number beca...

When they do come into my ear and tell me what those images exactly show and where theyre from, well show and where theyre from, well show them to you again. if weve got pictures of the balloon itself, i just want to reference some of the things about the significance of this whole event. when we get those pictures from the last couple of days, of the white balloon in the sky, this is the balloon weve been seeing. the point of controversy is this — is this a sophisticated surveillance operatio...