UH-HUH: All those spy balloons have had only a ‘limited’ benefit for China, White House claims,

“We assess at this time these balloons have provided limited additive capabilities to the PRC’s other intelligence platforms used over the United States,” Kirby said Monday at a White House briefing.

The US has so far downed four flying objects in just over a week, starting with an alleged Chinese spy balloon whose journey across the country raised national security questions. China contends the balloon had no espionage purpose and was just collecting weather data.

Three more objects have since been brought down — one over Alaska on Friday, in northern Canada on Saturday and in Michigan on Sunday. Officials have stopped short of saying what the three much smaller objects are or whether they think there’s a link between them and the Chinese balloon.

Kirby said Monday that recovery efforts were still continuing and noted the objects shot down over Alaska and Canada were in remote areas and that the object downed over Lake Huron “now lies in what is probably very deep water.”

He said officials still “have not yet been able to definitively assess what these most recent objects are.”

If the benefit Beijing was looking for was to gauge the mettle of our commander-in-chief, those balloons have been immeasurably valuable.