White House says no 'alien' activity, not sure if three downed aerial objects linked to surveillance

The White House said on Monday, 13 February, that there is "no indication of aliens or extraterrestrial activity" in the recently downed unidentified objects over North American skies. "I know there have been questions and concerns about this but there is no, again no indication of aliens or extraterrestrial activity with these recent takedowns," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said. "I wanted to make sure that the American people knew that," she added during her daily press briefing.

This comes after a US Air Force general on Sunday said he would not rule out aliens or any other explanation yet.

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White House National Security Council Strategic Communications Coordinator John Kirby also said that US "don't know for sure whether they [the unidentified objects] had a surveillance aspect to them, but we can't rule it out."

He added China has a "high-altitude balloon programme for intelligence collection that's connected to the People's Liberation Army." and that the programme was operating during the previous administration as well but they did not detect it. "We detected it. We tracked it," he said at the briefing.

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"We know that these PRC surveillance balloons have crossed over dozens of countries including some of our allies and partners. We assessed that at this time these balloons have provided limited value to PRC's other intelligence platforms but could become more valuable in future," Kirby added.

The USmilitary also said that it had recovered critical electronics from the suspected Chinese spy balloon downed off South Carolina's coast on February4, including key sensors presumably used for intelligence gathering.

"Crews have been able to recover significant debris from the site, including all of the priority sensor and electronics pieces identified as well as large sections of the structure," the USmilitary's Northern Command said in a statement.

Kirby, meanwhile, refuted China's allegations that the US is flying surveillance balloons over China. "I am not aware of any other craft that we are flying over into Chinese airspace," US NSC Coordinator said.

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Three more flying objects have been shot down by the American military in recent days over North America, most recently on Sunday when an object was shot down over Lake Huron, according to the Pentagon.

Meanwhile, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Monday, “We’re going to confirm what they are once we’ve collected the debris" adding "we’ve not recovered any debris from the three most recent shootdowns.”

“I want to be clear the three objects taken down this weekend are very different from what we were talking about last week,” he said.

According to some officials quoted by multiple media outlets, it is believed that the objects that were shot down over Canada and Alaska had payloads. Moreover, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Monday that the four aerial objects, including one over Yukon territory on Saturday, are connected in some way.

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