White House: Don't Worry About Aliens

The flying objects shot down over the US and Canada in recent days are still apparently unidentified, but the White House says Americans shouldn't worry about invaders from space. "There is no indication of aliens or extraterrestrial activity with these recent takedowns," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at the start of a press briefing Monday, per the New York Times, adding that she "loved ET, the movie." When a reporter pointed out that the Pentagon had said it wasn't ruling out extraterrestrial involvement, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said, "I don't think the American people need to worry about aliens, with respect to these craft."

Kirby said while the balloon shot down off the coast of North Carolina on Feb. 4 was Chinese, the US hasn't determined who owns the smaller objects shot down over Alaska, Canada, and, most recently, Lake Huron, reports the Washington Post. "We know the first one was Chinese. They admitted it. They claimed it was a weather balloon. We know it’s not," Kirby said. "These three, we don’t have attribution for right now. We don’t know. We don’t know who owns them." He said the three objects were unmanned, were not sending out communications signals, and did not have propulsion capabilities, the Times reports.

Kirby said President Biden has created an interagency team to study the "detection, analysis, and disposition of unidentified aerial objects that pose either safety or security risks," the Guardian reports. Kirby said the three objects were shot down because they posed a risk to aircraft—and Biden didn't have the Chinese balloon shot down because of political pressure. "These were decisions based purely and simply on what was in the best interest of the American people," he said. (More spy balloon stories.)