How officials are gauging the impact of the Chinese spy balloon on U.S.-China relations

Yahoo Finance columnist Rick Newman breaks down how government officials are reacting to the Chinese spy balloon incident and how it's impacted U.S.-China relations.

Video transcript

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JARED BLIKRE: The US striking what it's calling a spy balloon out of the sky just off the coast of South Carolina on Saturday, the explosion already sending geopolitical shock waves, with Secretary of State Anthony Blinken calling off a visit to China following the incident. China maintains the balloon's appearance in the US skies over the last week was an accident and claims the US used indiscriminate force by shooting down the balloon. Yahoo Finance's Rick Newman is here with his top takeaways. Rick, can you clear the air for us? No pun intended.

RICK NEWMAN: No, I cannot. Everybody thinks they know what happened here, and nobody really knows what happened yet. I mean, this balloon is now on the ocean floor. The Pentagon is sending divers and ships down to retrieve all the wreckage. And we'll eventually know a lot more about this balloon.

What was on the balloon? Was it camera sensors? Was it other types of sensors? What were they looking for? What was its purpose? Who was it communicating with in China? Who owned it? What part of the Chinese government was responsible for this?

I mean, we have tons of unanswered questions here. The Pentagon is not going to tell us everything they learned because some of this will be intelligence secrets. They need to tell us more, though, because this balloon made such a public visit to the United States.

And of course, we've now all seen the footage you guys were just showing of the balloon falling to the-- falling into the ocean after an Air Force plane shot it down. Lots of theories here. A lot of people are saying Biden should have done this, Biden should have done that. I'll tell you what, a lot of people don't know what they're talking about. We have too many balloon experts in the United States right now.

DAVID BRIGGS: My personal favorite was "Saturday Night Live." I mean, what an interesting scenario in which a Chinese spy balloon becomes the "SNL" cold open, Rick. But now, the balloon is a political football. Does either party really have much of a leg to stand on given the past?

RICK NEWMAN: I mean, it depends what we find out. So the Republican criticism of Biden-- obviously anybody who heard anything about the Sunday morning news shows knows this-- is that he waited too long before shooting the balloon down. And I'm not sure that's right at all.

I mean, it's obvious that Biden should not have ordered a shoot down of this thing over land. I mean, if you can wait-- look, they knew, they modeled where this balloon was going just based on winds. So the Pentagon knew it was going to end up over the Atlantic Ocean. And yet you had people saying, oh, the balloon's over Montana. I don't want it over my state. Shoot it down.

Well, if Biden had ordered a shoot down over Montana and a single head of cattle or a single chicken was injured, the same people criticizing Biden for waiting too long would say that he didn't wait long enough. People just need to calm down and figure out what are we going to know once the full story is in about this balloon. It's quite possible that Biden did the right thing by letting this balloon traverse the country.

Everybody seems to not think-- well, let's put it this way, people think that the Pentagon was just sort of sitting there staring dumbly into the sky and doing nothing. They were not doing that at all. They were pointing all the intelligence-gathering tools the United States has at this balloon, figuring out what they can tell about it.

They were probably flying all kinds of aircraft around it, taking their own technical sensor inputs and things like that. So this could have been an intelligence bonanza for the United States. I mean, given-- I realize it's only a balloon, but this could have ended up better for the United States than a lot of people think.

DAVID BRIGGS: I'll tell you what, Rick, Governor John Dutton of "Yellowstone" fame, he'd of taken that thing out right away.

RICK NEWMAN: He would have flown up there in his own plane and taken it out.

DAVID BRIGGS: I mean--

RICK NEWMAN: Because what Ted Cruz and a lot of other Republicans say they would have done, but, of course, it would have been different if they were running the show.

DAVID BRIGGS: Yeah, reports are there were three in the Trump administration that we never heard about. Rick Newman, good stuff. Thank you, sir.