Counterintelligence Value News Today

chinese spy balloon and when they realized they must tell the president about it. this comes as u.s. navy divers and other military personnel are scouring the ocean floor off the coast of myrtle beach, south carolina. and were getting new video in to cnn. a resident in south carolina shot this and said he believes it could be debris from the balloon. to be clear, cnn cannot independently verify whether or not this is, in fact, debris from that chinese spy balloon. were reaching out to ...

as high as commercial aircraft but lower than surveillance satellites. the size of three buses. two flights were diverted for safety. military leaders considered but ultimately decided against wthe presidents decision to shoot it down. but the idea that was under conversation shows how seriously u.s. officials and the president were taking the idea of a chinese spy balloon floating over the u.s. you mentioned what it was flying over. >> right. >> montana. the air base, has icbms there....

It, i know theres been a lot of conversation and a lot of debate about when you should shoot down this balloon or take it out. remember, theres at least three different considerations that the military and the intel officials are going through. the first one, of course, is what the intelligence vulnerabilities are, what kind of information that balloon is collecting about nuclear sites, about defense sites, and so forth. the second one is what is the counterintelligence value of observing what t...

Thing to do was to wait. and as i mentioned earlier, i also think that there was probably very likely a counterintelligence value to understanding how the chinese are collecting information against the united states. the value of that counterintelligence really cant be overstated. its incredibly important. >> and what does this say about the u.s./china relationship and just the brazen nature of chineses intelligence-gathering in the united states? its more extensive, i think, than people realize...

To me this is a brazen act. so at the political level we have to push back, defend american sovereignty and we have to make clear to the chinese that we are not going to tolerate this. >> is that your sense of why it would be flying over montana, because of that air base that maintains and operates these intercontinental ballistic missiles? >> that would be my guess. until we know what type of strumtation they have in the payload, we dont know. there are things we do in that part of the country....