When Alaskan fishermen snagged what seemed to be the remnants of another spy balloon they posted their catch to TikTok before handing it over to the FBI. The Department of Defense is examining it at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska but isn’t revealing much more.

“We do not know why the balloon was in the waters off the coast of Alaska nor are we going to characterize it at this time, but hope to learn more about the balloon’s origin and purpose,” the Defense Department’s Sue Gough told CNN.

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Multiple Spy balloon sightings‍

It's not the first suspected spy baloon. When a high-altitude surveillance balloon sailed across North America in early 2023, it entered through Alaskan airspace and was shot down as it flew over the Atlantic Ocean. At that point, the US assessed that the spy balloon was part of an ‘extensive’ surveillance program run by the Chinese military which had conducted at least two dozen missions over at least five continents in recent years.

It’s difficult to know exactly how many of the blimps have already flown overhead - or are still drifting above - as US intelligence agencies have sifted through hundreds of sightings of unidentified balloons and aerial objects in recent years.

In January 2024, Taiwan accused Beijing of flying 20 high-altitude balloons through its airspace over the previous month and said at least three drifted over important military bases. But a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson told Reuters, "I'm not aware of the specifics you mentioned, and it's not related to China's foreign affairs."

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Bots Amplify Spy Balloon Debate

The 2023 spy balloon saga in the US inflated US-China political tensions days before the US Secretary of State was to meet his counterpart in Beijing.

Twitter, meanwhile, was flooded with tens of thousands of bots trying to influence discussions around the flight over the US and Canada in early 2023, according to Carnegie Mellon University researchers Kathleen Carley and Lynnette Hui Xian Ng.