INTERVIEW | Former Acting Defense Secretary Doesn’t Think China Would Have Flown Balloon Under Trump

U.S. officials revealed a week ago, on Feb. 2, that a Chinese surveillance balloon was flying over the country. Two days later, on Feb. 4, an American fighter jet shot down the spy balloon with a missile.

Chris Miller, acting defense secretary under President Donald Trump, weighs in on the Biden administration’s decision to shoot down China’s balloon and whether he would have handled the situation differently.

“That goes back to when was it identified and when did our sensors pick up that,” Miller says of the spy balloon on “The Daily Signal Podcast,” adding: “I was a bad map reader, and people that worked with me in the military will attest to that. But I did look at the track of the balloon, and when it came over the Aleutian Islands [off Alaska], there was a lot of blue space.”

“There was a lot of doggone ocean where something could have been done,” he says. “I’ve heard that whole [Biden administration] justification: ‘Well, we didn’t want to knock it down because it would’ve fallen on somebody. Could have injured somebody or killed somebody.’ I mean, that’s a valid request.”

Miller adds:

Let me give you this one, Samantha: You spent a trillion dollars, $850 billion, [on] defense and we did not have the capability to take control of that doggone balloon and bring it down on our own terms without having to send up a hundred-million-dollar fighter aircraft to shoot a $400,000 Sidewinder missile?

On the podcast, Miller discusses some of Biden’s comments on China during his State of the Union address Tuesday night, his thoughts on how the Biden administration responded to the Chinese spy balloon, and his new book “Soldier Secretary: Warnings from the Battlefield and the Pentagon About America’s Most Dangerous Enemies.”

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