> Pentagon spokesperson Brigadier General Pat Ryder said on Thursday that the US was "aware that [the balloon] had intelligence collection capabilities". ... He said the efforts the US took to mitigate any intelligence gathering "contributed" to the balloon's failure to gather sensitive information.
So it was a spy balloon but it was off, or it was a spy balloon and on and we outsmarted it, or it was a spy balloon and it malfunctioned at least in part.
Nothing in that source suggests that it was not a spy balloon.
Maybe the article had a different headline and they didn’t read the actual article? I’m baffled how some could read that incredibly short article and come away with any assertion about what the pentagon thinks about the balloon other than that it can collect ”intelligence data”
> Pentagon spokesperson Brigadier General Pat Ryder said on Thursday that the US was "aware that [the balloon] had intelligence collection capabilities". ... He said the efforts the US took to mitigate any intelligence gathering "contributed" to the balloon's failure to gather sensitive information.
So it was a spy balloon but it was off, or it was a spy balloon and on and we outsmarted it, or it was a spy balloon and it malfunctioned at least in part.
Nothing in that source suggests that it was not a spy balloon.