Introduction

On January 28, a high-altitude surveillance balloon carrying a payload apparently the size of three coach buses entered the US Air Defense Identification Zone north of the Aleutian Islands. President Biden decided to shoot down the balloon but waited until it was over the Atlantic Ocean because it did not pose an immediate threat. John Culver is a retired senior intelligence officer who worked at the CIA for 35 years analyzing East Asian affairs including China and the People's Liberation Army. He will discuss why China's flying surveillance balloons around the world, what intelligence they may be after,. how decision-making in the Chinese system could have led to this operation on the eve of a visit by a senior U.S.