Sarah Burris is a long-time veteran of political campaigns, having worked as a fundraiser and media director across the United States. She transitioned into reporting while working for Rock the Vote, Future Majority and Wiretap Magazine, covering the Millennial Generation's perspective during the presidential elections. As a political writer, Burris has had bylines at CNN, Salon.com, BNR, and AlterNet and serves as a senior digital editor for RawStory.com.
UPDATE: In a statement, the Pentagon said: "An F-16 fired an AIM9x to successfully shoot down an airborne object flying at approximately 20,000 feet altitude in the U.S. airspace over Lake Huron in the state of Michigan. Its path and altitude raised concerns, including that it could be a hazard to civil aviation.... Based on its flight path and data we can reasonably connect this object to the radar signal picked up over Montana, which flew in proximity to sensitive DOD sites."
CNN is citing U.S. Military sources saying that a high-altitude object was shot down over Lake Huron. It comes after the FAA closed the air space over Lake Michigan for "national defense purposes."
It hasn't been revealed whether or not the object was a spy balloon, though at least three have been shut down so far over the past week.
Gen. Wesley Clark told CNN that it's a possible effort by China to see what holes exist in the United States radar system. When the first balloon was flying over the U.S., China's government claimed that it was just a rogue weather balloon. They haven't indicated whether there is an outbreak of these kinds of balloons.
The first balloon shot down did belong to China, the Pentagon said in a report earlier this week. The House passed a toothless bill denouncing the balloon, which China attacked as "political manipulation."
The first balloon was being manipulated the Pentagon said in a briefing.
Mary Schiavo Former inspector General to the U.S. Department of Transportation said that it'd caused a lot of problems for military, civilian and corporate air traffic.
She said that she's not concerned about copycats or pranks, so much as she's worried about other countries using airships for similar purposes.
The National Security Council Spokesperson told the press in a statement, "These objects did not closely resemble and were much smaller than the PRC balloon and we will not definitively characterize them until we can recover the debris, which we are working on."
Rep. Jack Bergman (R-MI) told Fox that the object was octagonal in shape and hovering around 20,000 ft.
