And here it is, the story we've all been waiting for.[PJ Media] Senators received a classified briefing from the Pentagon on Thursday and were told that the idea that the Chinese balloon was partly manufactured using parts made in the U.S. couldn’t be dismissed. When asked that question directly, officials gave no definitive answer.
"American companies shouldn’t be helping build spy satellites that are used against their own citizens," Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) told reporters at the Capitol after the briefing. "Maybe there’s nothing to be said about that," he added, "but somebody asked about it, and nobody, nobody in that briefing said, ’oh, it’s not a problem.'"
Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley had other concerns. "Obviously, the other thing that it made was crystal clear from this briefing was how unprepared, totally unprepared the administration and, frankly, the Pentagon was for this to happen," he told Fox News Digital.
"And listen, they’ve already made it public that we’ve known that there have been previous balloon flights over U.S. territories and, of course, the United States in years past. They knew that already, and yet they had nothing prepared to deal with this espionage balloon that came right over the United States. I mean, it’s really, it is an incredible, incredible lack of planning. And frankly, I think major, major lapses of judgment," Hawley said.
Fox News confirmed that the Chinese balloon had western made parts with English writing, according to a source familiar with classified briefing Thursday.
However, the State Department said earlier Thursday: "We are confident that the balloon manufacturer has a direct relationship with China’s military and is an approved vendor of the PLA, according to information published in an official procurement portal for the PLA."
Sullivan also said that he is encouraging officials to keep briefings on the spy balloon, which was reported to be hovering over Alaska last week before traversing most of the U.S. mainland before being shot down Saturday by a U.S. military missile.
If U.S.-manufactured parts ended up in a Chinese spy balloon, the first questions Congress needs to ask is which company supplied the parts and how did they get on a green list for the Chinese military? The next thing Congress needs to do is ban U.S. companies from selling or manufacturing anything to the Chinese military.
But it’s not surprising. Lenin had the right idea when he was quoted as saying, "The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them."