"So I told them as soon as they could shoot it down, shoot it down. They made a wise decision. They shot it down over water, they’re recovering most of the parts, and they're good."
WASHINGTON, DC - SEPTEMBER 26: U.S. President Biden speaks at a meeting of the White House Competition Council at the White House on September 26, 2022 in Washington, DC. Biden spoke on his Administration’s actions to lower inflation, reduce prices for consumers and raise wagers for workers. Biden was joined by Secretary of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
A fighter jet shot down the balloon on Saturday afternoon off the coast of South Carolina. The 200-foot tall balloon, which weighed about 2,000 pounds and had a payload roughly the size of a jet airliner, first passed over Alaska's Aleutian Islands on Jan. 28 before making its way across the continental U.S.
Pentagon Press Secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said that Chinese surveillance balloons have entered the U.S. at least four previous times.
Biden downplayed the significance of the latest balloon, placing it in the context of massive surveillance operations taking place all over the world.
"The total amount of intelligence gathering that’s going on by every country around the world is overwhelming," Biden told Telemundo. "It’s not a major breach… It's a violation of international law. It's our airspace. And once it comes into our space, we can do what we want with it.
The destroyed balloon left a massive debris field in shallow waters that U.S. Navy and Coast Guard personnel are collecting and categorizing.
FBI specialists have already started analyzing the debris in Quantico, Virginia, with a primary focus on recovered electronics.
Republicans have harshly criticized Biden for not taking immediate action to shoot down the balloon. Some Democrats have also questioned why there was a delay in bringing it down.
"Do we have a plan for the next thing that happens and how we are going to deal with it? Because, quite frankly, I'll just tell you I don't want a d--n balloon going across the United States when we potentially could have taken it down over the Aleutian Islands … or in some of the areas in Montana," Jon Tester, D-Mont., said at a hearing on Thursday.