According to NBC News, the suspected Chinese high-altitude surveillance balloon that transited the US earlier this year was able to gather sensitive information from various US military sites and transmit it back to Beijing in real time. The balloon reportedly made multiple passes over some of the sites before being shot down by the US military on February 4, 2023. While the intelligence community is not overly concerned about the information gathered by the balloon, its ability to transmit data in real time raises questions about whether it gathered intelligence that the US is unaware of. Officials have stated that the data transmitted by the balloon was not much more sophisticated than what Chinese satellites orbiting similar locations could gather. The US government was able to protect sensitive sites and censor some signals before the balloon was able to pick them up, officials have said, but this latest revelation raises concerns about future Chinese espionage capabilities. The FBI is still examining the remains of the balloon, and there has been no comment from the National Security Council at the White House or the Pentagon.