Good morning. Welcome to Axios today. It's Monday, February 6th. I'm Nile Boone. Here's

what we're covering today. Tribal nations face threats to funding for food security.

But first, Biden, Beijing, and the balloon. That's today's one big thing.

The US military on Saturday shot down a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon

that had been flying over the US since last week. It was first spotted above Montana Wednesday

and was shot down off the coast of South Carolina. China condemned the US move as an overreaction

and threatened, quote, further actions. Here with what we've learned in the aftermath,

and what this means for the US-China relationship, is Axios' Hans Nichols. Hey, Hans,

welcome back to Axios today. Hey, thanks for having me. First, what is this balloon? What actually

was it for? Because China is saying it was a civilian research airship that was just blown off

course? Yeah, what I love about sort of the first reference to this in some of the stories is

that sometimes it's a spy balloon, and sometimes it's a surveillance balloon. And that strikes me

as a distinction without a difference, right? I mean, if the balloon is surveilling you, is it spying?

I don't know. Let's have a journalism seminar. The Pentagon does seem pretty confident that it

was used for surveillance and that it was picking up information across the United States. One thing

that the balloon like this can get you other than a satellite is maybe slightly clear images,

and they can loiter over a subject that it wants to photograph longer. So part of the sort of

theory of the White House's case is that because it was shot down over water, the package will

survive a lot better. If they recover this package, they could have a good sense.

I just have to ask, how did this happen? I guess we don't know that, right? I mean, we know that

there have been a series of balloons that have been flying over. The Pentagon has kind of been

tracking these for some time now. The big question or among the big questions, I should say,

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