The Pentagon later said a second Chinese balloon was transiting over Latin America.
: Tensions between Washington and Beijing have intensified after two suspected Chinese spy balloons were detected flying over the US and Latin America, hours before Joe Biden’s top diplomat was meant to depart on his first official China trip in a bid to improve the relationship between the two countries.
The discovery of the first balloon alarmed US officials and prompted widespread calls to immediately shoot the balloon down, including from former US president Donald Trump, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former UN ambassador Nikki Haley and far-right Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. In a briefing at the Pentagon on Friday Brigadier General Patrick Ryder said the balloon, which is about the size of two buses, had “violated US airspace and international law, which is unacceptable.”
However, Republican Congressman Mike Gallagher, who chairs the Select Committee on China in the US Congress, accused the Biden administration of being soft. “They’re testing us. They’re mocking us. They’re trying to embarrass us and of course they’re trying to collect as much sensitive intelligence as possible from us. So, the responses I’ve seen thus far from the administration raise more questions than they answer.”
However, on Friday morning, Blinken told China’s top foreign policy official Wang Yi that the balloon’s course was a violation of sovereignty and “unacceptable”.
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