Rep. Mike Gallagher: I don't think China would hesitate to shoot down a U.S. asset in their airspace

And now I'm joined by Republican Congressman Mike Gallagher. He is the chairman of the select committee on China. He is a member of the Intelligence and Armed Services Committee. He is a former Navy congressman. Thank you so much. I can't

think

of a better guest right now from the hill. his colleague, Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, is demanding an immediate intelligence briefing on how it happened. We're hearing calls from, of course, the spokesperson for a group of eight, the top eight members, bipartisan members of the House and the Senate. We understand that the staff of the group of eight were informed last time.

I was told tonight that, as NBC News reports, have you been informed and how quickly do you

think

the Hill should be informed about all of this? Well, as soon as possible, the logistical problem is that I landed back in Wisconsin around the time the story broke, so it won't be until Monday morning before we can return on a skiff and I think it's totally It is appropriate that the gang of eight meet in the interim period and that we, in the intelligence community, really delve into this on Monday night in a bipartisan manner. China Select Committee Ranking Member Raja Krishnamorthy and I released a bipartisan statement last night saying this is an infringement on American sovereignty that we must reject.

I still have no response. questions about why we decided not to tear it down, I'm not sure I'm convinced by the argument that debris was the problem, especially since we've been tracking this from the Aleutian Islands to sparsely populated areas of Canada and Ideally in Montana we could take control and look under the hood, analyze the instrumentation to determine exactly what the Chinese are using this

asset

for, but there are many unanswered questions, so the eight-member band of the intelligence community needs to be briefed. I think they are entirely appropriate and we should do it as soon as possible.

China says, of course, that it regrets that a civilian blimp that it claims was primarily used for weather research entered US

airspace

directly, General Rider made it very clear that this is maneuverable, they have control over he, it didn't come in and it's not commercial, it's clearly not a weather balloon, right, yeah, I don't think we should trust the official Chinese Communist Party narrative, uh, there's evidence, uh, you know, that goes back in time. just to the early parts of the pandemic to suggest why we shouldn't trust what they say publicly and I think multiple early indications are that this is something more akin to an intelligence gathering

asset

.

I also think I

would

be surprised if it were a coincidence that this happened at the same time that Secretary Blinken was preparing to go to Beijing. I think he made the right decision by postponing his visit. A shake and a smile with General Secretary Xi Jinping

would

have seemed strange after this insult to our sovereignty. I think Americans want to see tangible consequences for flagrant violations of our sovereignty and the curious thing I would say is that this is part of a pattern of aggression, right, this is not an isolated incident, we see, you know, a massive New York Times story recently pointing to the proliferation of Chinese Police Stations in major US cities.

We have people connected to the CCP potentially purchasing land adjacent to key US national security facilities. The CCP infiltrates US universities We need to understand the pattern of aggression here and find a way to push back in a strong and intelligent bipartisan way In what way do you think the United States should have taken down the balloon or taken action against it in recent days. I believe it and I think we could have done it without minimizing the debris initially. There is some question about what altitude if it was at a super high altitude makes it harder to understand, it was more because of the recent briefing, it was more like sixty thousand feet, if there is a way to lower the altitude, partially disable it and then pick it up or gain control to analyze it. without destroying it completely, that for me would be the best option as a technical matter at this time, I don't know if that is possible, we can't just allow this thing to continue transiting through the United States and I don't understand the initial indications. that we got from the Pentagon, well this wasn't that valuable an intelligence gathering asset, even if that were the case, even if this was actually a civilian weather device, we're talking about defending our sovereign

airspace

and I don't think the The Chinese Communist Party would

hesitate

to

shoot

down an American asset that was in

their

airspace, and in fact, they also shot down YouTube planes in the distant past, so we have to do something about it.

Doing nothing is not an option. Are you worried about the balloon? We could bundle sensors or drones with even more sensitive information that we couldn't track. I do it again. That's why I don't think we should be optimistic about the intelligence gathering capabilities of this asset. I mean, if the IC knows something that I don't. I want to hear about it right now, but in my opinion, all the more reason to try to understand what we're dealing with here. Are we 100% sure that we know what this asset is capable of and, in particular, why it is transiting its sensitive nuclear core? facilities since it was detected in the vicinity of Malmstrom Air Force Base, which is, of course, where we have intercontinental ballistic missiles.

I think we need to understand exactly what this is and if Admiral Severis is right, as he usually is, we're going to see a lot more of this kind of thing in the future, we really need to understand what we're up against and, very briefly, apparently we're also about to approve a new two billion dollar military package for Ukraine. The point at which Republicans are going to complain about not having more money for Ukraine given what President McCarthy and others have already said. I think we got some sensible oversight provisions that we have in the National Defense Authorization Act that was passed at the end of the last Congress.

As Ukraine's inspector general, we are required to submit quarterly reports on stocks of our key munitions systems, so I think it's a way to go to our Republican colleagues who might be more skeptical and tell them that we're doing responsible oversight. of this help I think one thing we need to do in the select committee on China is to better unravel the connection between Vladimir Putin and Russia and Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party. I think we are seeing a de facto alliance against the United States and our allies here, we have only just realized that, but I think that by improving our support for the Ukrainians we can also strengthen deterrence when it comes to Taiwan and a possible foreign invasion of the Pla.