Babylon Bee's February China Spy balloon takes were quite prescient

Doug P. | 12:58 PM on April 03, 2023

Earlier this year after allowing China’s spy balloon to float across the entire continental United States before shooting it down after it reached the Atlantic Ocean, President Biden claimed the object wasn’t “a major [security] breach.”

That of course aged embarrassingly:

Chinese spy balloon gathered intelligence from sensitive U.S. military sites, despite U.S. efforts to block it https://t.co/8nQXAGMuc0

— CNBC (@CNBC) April 3, 2023

Another banner moment for Biden:

China was able to control the balloon so it could make multiple passes over some of the sites (at times flying figure eight formations) and transmit the information it collected back to Beijing in real time, the three officials said. The intelligence China collected was mostly from electronic signals, which can be picked up from weapons systems or include communications from base personnel, rather than images, the officials said.

The three officials said China could have gathered much more intelligence from sensitive sites if not for the administration’s efforts to move around potential targets and obscure the balloon’s ability to pick up their electronic signals by stopping them from broadcasting or emitting signals.

As it turns out, the “so real it might not be satire” folks at the Babylon Bee called all this long ago.

If the country had an honest national media this would have been the headline everywhere instead of just at a satirical publication: