What Made the Balloon Drama Pop Off?
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Slate
3.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 4 August 2018
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Come to think of it, a giant balloon seems like a pretty conspicuous way to spy on another country. So what was that Chinese spy balloon doing above the U.S.—and what have American planes been shooting down since?
Guest: Shane Harris, Washington Post reporter covering intelligence and national security.
Host: Lizzie O’Leary
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Transcript
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| 0:30.0 | Would you like to say who you are? |
| 0:32.0 | Sure. I'm Shane Harris and I cover intelligence and national security for the Washington Post. |
| 0:38.0 | And I guess you are the unofficial what next T UFO correspondent? How do you feel about that? I feel great about it. |
| 0:46.0 | I feel great about it. I feel like this is all coming full circle and happy to be |
| 0:50.5 | wearing this hat today. Two years ago, I had Shane on the show |
| 0:57.0 | to talk about the intelligence community's big report on UFOs, |
| 1:01.0 | or UAPs as they like to call them. |
| 1:04.0 | Unidentified aerial phenomena. |
| 1:06.3 | It was the first time the military and intelligence agencies publicly laid out what they had |
| 1:11.2 | seen and couldn't quite identify in the sky. |
| 1:15.0 | So naturally, I thought of Shane when the US started shooting objects out of the sky, beginning |
| 1:20.0 | on February 4th. |
| 1:21.0 | It's so close. |
| 1:23.0 | It's shot. |
| 1:24.0 | Oh my God, it just shot. |
| 1:27.0 | Oh, it popped. |
... |
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