U.S. officials say Chinese balloon transmitted in real time

NBC News first reported on Monday that the Chinese spy balloon that recently floated over the United States was transmitting information about U.S. military installations back to China in real-time, according to U.S. officials. The balloon succeeded, despite U.S. forces’ attempts to stop the transmissions.

What information was the balloon transmitting? Sometimes the balloon flew in figure-eight patterns to pass back over military installations. Officials said that the balloon’s intelligence mainly was gleaned from electronic signals rather than images. U.S. forces did counter some of the balloon’s information-gathering abilities by moving around some targets and stopping some signal emissions.

Dig deeper: Listen to Cal Thomas’s commentary on The World and Everything in It podcast about China’s increasing aggressiveness.