The NPR Politics Podcast - More UFOs Shot Down By US Air Force

Episode Date: February 13, 2023

The United States military downed three more unidentified flying objects, though the Biden administration said it had no indication that the objects were intended for surveillance. National Security Council Spokesman John Kirby said that he didn't think "the American people need to worry about aliens, with respect to these craft."This episode: voting correspondent Miles Parks, politics reporter Deepa Shivaram, and national security correspondent Greg Myre.This episode was produced by Elena Moore and Casey Morell. It was edited by Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Research and fact-checking by Devin Speak.Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey, this is Anna and Haley, and we're coming to you very sad from Philadelphia after the Eagles lost last night. This podcast was recorded at 2.25 p.m. on February 13th, 2023. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but at least we have Rihanna's halftime show. Okay, here's the show. Legendary halftime show but brutal day brutal day especially on the penalty and everything it just did not feel great at the end there sorry guys ended on a bad note hey there it's the npr politics podcast i'm miles parks i cover voting i'm deepa shivaram i cover the white house and we've got greg myrie here with us he covers national security for npr hi greg hey guys and i am so

selfishly excited g, that you are here because it felt like every single time I checked my phone this weekend, the U.S. had shot down another unidentified flying object. And I'm just hoping you can explain what is going on. Well, I can help. I'm sure I can explain everything. Well, how many are we up to at this point? Let's start there. Well, four in the last nine days. We had the Chinese spy balloon that was shot down on February 4th, so that was nine days ago. And then we had three, one on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Okay, so it's not just in my head. This is becoming an everyday occurrence. What do we know about what these objects were? Were the three that were shot down this weekend connected to the spy balloon?

No, it doesn't seem so. But we really do have few details on these three most recent shoot downs, Miles. On Sunday, a U.S. fighter jet shot down a small object over Lake Huron off the eastern shores of Michigan. A day earlier on Saturday, an Air Force plane took down an aircraft in western Canada. Now, this was coordinated with the Canadians, and they're working on the recovery, the Canadians, that is. And then the day before that, on Friday, the U.S. fired a missile to bring down an aircraft just off the northeast coast of Alaska. It landed on an ice shelf, and the U.S. military says the extreme weather conditions are preventing them

from trying to get to that debris. So there are recovery operations at all three of these sites, but they don't have it and they're not telling us exactly what it is, whether it's a plane or balloon, whatever. And just taking a step back, Greg, this feels really odd. The U.S. has shot down four objects in the last week or so. And is this something that has been just happening and we haven't been talking about it? Are they shooting down more things now than they had before? What's going on? So, Miles, you're right. This is exceedingly rare. It just doesn't happen. So a couple of things are at play here. One is the Chinese spy balloon that certainly put the U.S. military on high alert,

and they started looking. Literally, they have changed the settings on the radar systems, and you can make these radar systems much more sensitive, where in the past, they were looking for things like jet fighters or incoming missiles and ignoring other stuff. A slow-moving, high altitude balloon was not the kind of thing they were looking for. The radar parameters were not set for that, but in the past week or so, they've announced that they've reset the parameters, so they're seeing all this stuff. You can almost think of it like your email. A lot of stuff goes into junk mail that you may never look at, but after this spy balloon, the U.S. went in

and looked on its radar system in the past, looked at its junk mail, and saw there were Chinese spy balloons that came four times in recent years. And then they're seeing these other small, slow-moving objects in the past week, three of which have been shot down. Okay, so this is a lot for the U.S. government to take in. Deepa, you cover the White House. What is the administration saying about all this? Yeah, well, first of all, a cringe up here. The press secretary started off today's briefing just outright saying aliens, not a concern here at the moment. There is no, again, no indication of aliens or extraterrestrial activity with these recent takedowns.

But that's exactly what the government would say. Right, isn't that like a pro-alien agenda? Yes, I kind of feel like that's what they would say if there were aliens. That was the very top of the briefing already addressed. But yeah, the White House, to echo what Greg said, they still are not providing a lot of information here. This is something that they are still looking at. They are still collecting, even retrieving some of these objects. Some things that we do know off the bat, they're calling them objects. They are not using the term balloon. They have not strayed

from that ever since Friday when John Kirby, who's the spokesperson for the National Security Council, first announced that object that was over Alaska. Object is the word here. That's kind of what we're sticking with at the moment. The things that they're looking for in each of these objects that have been found over the course of the weekend that are different than the spy balloon, they knew that that one was, one, flying at a higher altitude, that it was getting surveillance. They knew that, and that was part of the course of action and shooting that down. For these other objects that we're still learning about, what they're assessing is, is it a threat? Does it have communication capabilities? Does it have surveillance capabilities? Is it propelling itself? And the ones that they found so far are not. They are kind of at the

whim of the wind is the phrase that John Kirby used. And then the other thing they're looking at is, is it crude? Are there humans operating this? And that's kind of been of concern as well. But one thing that we have heard from the White House on is that they don't have an open line of communication with Chinese counterparts ever since that spy balloon was shot down. And that's kind of something that filters to pick up some of these kind of different kinds of objects. Is it fair to assume that this is not the end, that there potentially could be more shootdowns in the coming days or weeks? Yeah, Miles, I think what's going to have to happen is these three most recent shootdowns, the U.S. will have to gather the material with the help of Canada, look at it, figure out what it is. Now, if these were just harmless, errant weather balloons,

then perhaps they can say, okay, we don't need to do this all the time. But given what happened with the Chinese spy balloon, they may have to pay more vigilance or depending on what we find with these other three items that are now being investigated. So the U.S. will probably have to make a decision and work its way through. Does it want to react to every little blip on the radar screen? There's a lot of stuff floating out there, both in terms of planes, balloons, and whatnot. And normally, you don't want to have to look at all that. You want to concentrate on things that are considered real threats.

I don't think the U.S. wants to get in a situation where they scramble the jets every time there's a mysterious blip on the radar screen. On the other hand, you don't want threats to go undetected. And certainly one of the thoughts is the Chinese were using a balloon at a high altitude, perhaps to test and look if there were any blind spots in the U.S. coverage. So it's certainly opened a whole can of worms this past 10 days or so, and the U.S. is going to have to figure out how it wants to address this going forward. And I am really interested to hear about how this affects U.S.-China relations going forward. But first, let's take a quick break. Hi, it's Ron Elving.

Don't miss our latest bonus episode of the show where we talk about how the State of the Union wasn't always the primetime spectacle we know today. Thomas Jefferson came in and was like, you know, this could be an email. Exactly. Monarchical

was a word he used. He didn't like the idea of a speech from the throne. Right. That bonus episode is available now for NPR Politics Podcast Plus listeners. Now, if that's not you, it could be. It's easy to sign up and you'll be supporting NPR in the process. Just go to the link in our episode notes, plus.npr.org. That's plus.npr.org. And we're back. And Greg, I want to talk more about the Chinese response to all of this. A spokesperson for the country's foreign minister this morning basically accused

the U.S. of flying stuff over their airspace all the time. Can you tell us a little bit more about what they said? Right. As you noted, it came from the Chinese foreign ministry today, and they said the U.S. has made 10 high-altitude balloon flights over Chinese airspace during the past year without Chinese permission. Now, it certainly strikes an odd note that all of a sudden the Chinese are saying this. They hadn't made this accusation previously. So why they're making it now if they've known about this for the past year or even in the past week since their balloon was shot down. Now, the U.S. responded immediately, categorically denying this, that it sent spy balloons, high-altitude spy balloons over China the way the U.S. says China has done several times in recent years.

Impossible to prove that either way other than to say the U.S. and China spy on each other all the time. So they do do spying, but I would make the distinction between, say, using satellites, which both countries do, all sorts of trying to hack into computer systems, which both countries do, and flying balloons or other aircraft over the airspace of China or the U.S. John Kirby, the spokesman for the National Security Council, was absolutely categorical. He said the U.S. is not flying aircraft of any type over Chinese airspace. Okay, so Deepa, this situation seems like it is escalating over the last couple days. I think there's a lot of appetite, honestly, to maybe hear from the president on some of this stuff. Is there any indication from the White House that there are any plans to hear from Biden on this? That came up in the briefing today as well, that if this is escalating, like you said,

if this is something we're shooting something out of the sky every day this weekend since Friday. Should we hear from the president about this? And right now we haven't. You know, he has not come out and directly said this. He didn't really have any public events today. So we haven't even really seen the president. I will say I was at the White House on Friday and he did get asked about the object that was shot down over Alaska. And he said it was a success. But that's really all we've heard from the president as of late. So there is kind of this lingering question of, you know, at what point does the president come out? I think the White House is sort of waiting to collect more information on this until then. But in terms of that, you know, open line of communication that we were talking about with China, with, you know,

Biden's counterpart in China, Xi Jinping, he had an interview last week where he said that he isn't concerned that the Chinese spy balloon is affecting, you is affecting relations with China in a negative way. He said to PBS that he had made it clear to Xi Jinping that he wanted to compete with China and they're not looking for conflict. And he kind of left it at that. OK, so looking ahead, Greg, I'm hoping you can kind of level set here. Where are you at in thinking about this just in terms of how worried the American people should be about where this is going? Yeah, two ideas which are a little bit separate or even contradictory. Many in the national security community see the spy balloon as an important wake-up call because it's really put

the focus on Chinese spying. It doesn't get enough attention. The Chinese and the U.S. both had these massive and very sophisticated espionage programs, which they direct against one another. A lot of people in national security say we should pay more attention to that. It involves ordinary people because the Chinese are very much interested in collecting massive amounts of data and often getting that from companies that have personal data. They want to get that. So there is a sense that, yes, this is part of a significant problem. Now, that said, many also see the Chinese balloon program as perhaps a relatively low-level activity, just one small part of this, and they still haven't quite figured out what the Chinese are trying to do.

Hopefully, we'll learn more if more of the material can be recovered from the spy balloon shot down off the coast of South Carolina. So it's some irony here that this spy balloon is getting so much attention when there are many other parts of the Chinese espionage program that are considered much more important. But again, I think the bottom line would be the Chinese are very much targeting U.S. government and military secrets. And they're also going after cutting edge U.S. technology at private companies. All right. Well, we'll leave it there for now. NPR's Greg Myrie, thank you so much for being with us. And I'm sure we will have you on the next time the U.S. shoots down an unidentified flying object. Maybe later today, maybe tomorrow. Who can say, right?

Hey, I'm ready, Miles. Anytime. All right. Thanks, Greg. Sure thing. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Deepa Shivaram. I cover the White House. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.