Still assessing what intel China gathered from spy balloon: US

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The United States has said it is still doing an assessment of what exact intelligence information China was able to gather from its spy balloon that flew over sensitive American military sites in February. The comments from the Pentagon came after a media report said the Chinese spy balloon gathered information about some of the US military sites through electronic signals.

"As of right now, we're still doing an assessment of what exactly the intel was that China was able to gather but we do know that the steps that we took provided little additive value for what they've been able to collect from satellites before," Pentagon Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters at a news conference.

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The balloon had entered the United States from Alaska on January 28 and crossed through several states over various sensitive military sites, including Montana where the US stores some of its nuclear assets, before it was shot down in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of South Carolina on February 4.

NBC News, citing two current senior US officials and one former senior administration official, said China was able to control the balloon so it could make multiple passes over some of the sites (at times flying figure eight formations) and transmit the information it collected back to Beijing in real-time.

"The intelligence China collected was mostly from electronic signals, which can be picked up from weapons systems or include communications from base personnel, rather than images, the officials said," the news channel said.

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