WASHINGTON — The Biden administration suspects that three unidentified objects downed since last Friday served commercial purposes and weren’t used for spying, a judgment that may help ease anxiety over a Chinese balloon that traversed the U.S. before being shot down.
The intelligence community believes the objects — unlike the giant airship shot down on Feb. 4 — “could just be balloons tied to some commercial or benign purpose,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Tuesday.
“We don’t see anything that points right now to these being part of the PRC spy balloon program or in fact, intelligence collection against the United States of any kind,” Kirby said, using the abbreviation of China’s formal name, the People’s Republic of China.
