Why Biden administration allowed a foreign adversary’s surveillance device to breach U.S. airspace and letting it stay for days?

Lawmakers are going to look into what they call the Biden administration’s failure to protect national security. This is because a Chinese spy balloon flew over the U.S. for several days before it was shot down on Saturday.

Even though there hasn’t been an official announcement of an investigation yet, House Republicans can’t wait to question the Biden administration about why they let a foreign enemy’s spying device into U.S. airspace and let it stay there for days.

President Biden may have decided on Wednesday to shoot down the balloon, but the military didn’t do it until the balloon was over the ocean. It’s not clear why the U.S. was so sure that it didn’t pose a threat to safety or security in those days.

Already tense relations with China have gotten worse because of this, and GOP lawmakers say it’s another sign of U.S. weakness in the face of growing threats from Beijing.

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Alabama), who is in charge of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC), said that he was “deeply concerned” by the Biden administration’s decision to let the spy balloon fly over the United States.

In a statement released on Saturday, he said, “The White House needs to explain why they let a Chinese Communist Party spy balloon fly over the United States and what damage this did to our national security.” “The United States needs to show that it is strong to stop China. This failure is another sign that the Biden administration is weak.”

The HASC has already set up a hearing for Tuesday morning to hear from people outside of government about the “urgent threat” that the Chinese Communist Party poses to U.S. national security.

Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) also said he was worried that the Biden administration did not “take care” of the balloon before it became a “national security threat.”

McCaul said in a statement, “I will ask for answers and hold the administration accountable for this embarrassing show of weakness.”

Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), who is a member of the HASC, took the issue a step further by asking Biden and Vice President Harris to step down.

Wilson wrote on Twitter, “When the domestic attack happens, Biden and Harris won’t be able to respond in a good way.”

On January 28, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) found the balloon north of Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. “It wasn’t time,” Gen. Glen VanHerck, who is in charge of NORAD, told reporters Monday, “for us to shoot it down.”

Five days later, on February 2, the Pentagon told reporters about the balloon after reports of sightings over Montana, where one of the country’s three nuclear missile fields is located. This made people worried that China might have gotten information that could hurt national security.

While most Democrats have defended the Pentagon’s response, Democratic Sen. Jon Tester of Montana said he was “demanding answers” from the Biden administration and said he would hold a hearing as chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee.

Tester said in a statement on Friday, “I will call people before my committee to get real answers about how this happened and how we can stop it from happening again.”

Ian Johnson, a senior fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that there should be a “cooling off period” before any investigations. He said that the incident is a national security issue that shouldn’t be used to score political points.

Johnson also said that the Biden administration was in a “bind.” They could either wait or shoot the balloon down over land, which could have hurt people or damaged buildings and caused its own scandal.

He said, “I don’t think there are any betrayers in the Pentagon.” “These claims of an outrageous breach of our national security don’t make sense to me unless you’re saying the Pentagon is very bad at its job, which I don’t think is the case.”

The Pentagon kept track of the balloon, which was said to weigh about 200 pounds and be the size of three school buses. It floated unhindered all the way to the Atlantic Ocean, where a fighter jet shot it down on Saturday, just off the coast of South Carolina. The equipment that was attached to the balloon is being saved through recovery operations.

China says the balloon is an airship for civilian weather research and is angry that the U.S. shot it out of the sky.

But the Pentagon is sure it was a spy balloon because they have seen them before, including in the Pacific near Hawaii and in other places. In Latin America, a second spy balloon has been seen.

The Biden administration said that the spying device was taken down as soon as it was safe to do so.

In a statement released on Sunday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said, “Today’s deliberate and legal action shows that President Biden and his national security team will always put the safety and security of the American people first, while responding effectively to the unacceptable violation of our sovereignty by the People’s Republic of China.”

Sunday, a senior defense official also said that tracking the balloon was useful and that they “took all necessary steps to protect against” sensitive information being collected.

According to a Pentagon release, an official said, “We were able to study and look over the balloon and its equipment, which was helpful.”

A few Republican senators, like Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-S.D.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, have also asked for an investigation.

In an interview with Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who is the vice chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, called Biden’s response to the spy balloon a “dereliction of duty.”

But the questions now go beyond how the Pentagon reacted to the Chinese spy balloon that made news in recent days.

On Sunday, U.S. officials confirmed that the Trump administration didn’t seem to know that Chinese balloons had flown over the continental U.S. three times while it was in charge.

Monday, Vanherck told reporters that intelligence analysts didn’t know about the three balloon incursions until after they happened. He called this a “domain awareness gap” that needs to be fixed.

Johnson from the Council on Foreign Relations said that the more important question right now should be why the Chinese are using surveillance balloons. He said that politicians should put politics aside to find out the answer.

“There are so many unanswered questions, so many holes in the story, and we just don’t have enough facts,” Johnson said. “During the Cold War, both sides worked harder to solve problems and treat threats as a matter of national security, not as a way to score political points. There is no spirit of working together.”