A Chinese spy balloon that flew over the United States earlier this year before being shot down did not collect information as it went across the country, the Pentagon said on Thursday.
  • Whirlybird@aussie.zoneEnglish
    01·
    1 year ago

    “We investigated ourselves and found no wrongdoing”

    How can they say this? What are they basing it on? The article literally just has the quote of

    “We assess that it did not collect while it was flying over the U.S.,” Pentagon spokesman Brigadier General Pat Ryder told reporters.

    How did they assess that?

    • neptune@dmv.socialEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      We shot it down right? So they probably looked at the hardware. Antenna, processor and other hardware design. Should be pretty easy to reverse engineer it’s capabilities and flight path. At that point you’d know if it was close enough to monitor whatever military base.

      Yeah it’s going to be largely conjectural.

      • Whirlybird@aussie.zoneEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        They didn’t just say that it didn’t collect military info though, they said it didn’t collect anything. There’s no way a Chinese spy balloon didn’t collect anything. They have no possible way of knowing what it did and didn’t collect, especially since they destroyed it. All we know is that it absolute did collect data - that’s the reason why it exists in the first place.