Yahoo Finance’s Rick Newman discusses the takedown of an unidentified object hovering over Lake Huron.

Video Transcript

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JULIE HYMAN: The US military shot down in octagonal object over Lake Huron early Sunday. This, the latest incident involving a floating or flying object since a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon was taken down last week, putting North American security on high alert. Joining us now with more on the story is Yahoo Finance's Rick Newman.

Rick, this story, obviously, is getting a lot of attention because, you know, there's, A, the concern about security but, B, because it's just so weird, right? Like, why doesn't the US government just say what this stuff is?

RICK NEWMAN: Well, I think it's worth taking them at their word for the time being that they're not really sure. I think people have this assumption that the Pentagon can see everything everywhere, and that is not the case.

My understanding of what's going on here is this stuff has basically been sneaking into US airspace because the radars that monitor US airspace are not designed to pick these things up. They are designed to pick up the things we all know about, which are jet aircraft and missiles. And I think what happens is when you adjust for something like balloons, which are not easy to see on radar, what I think happens is you start getting all kinds of false positives on the radar.

So you start picking up a lot of smaller stuff. But I think what clearly has happened is they have tweaked the algorithm on the radars so they're now finding more stuff. And they're probably having to sort through a lot of additional signals, as well, which can be problematic. So this is gonna get worked out.

But in the meanwhile, a couple of things. How many more of these-- how many more of these objects are there? And what in the heck is going on in China? If you-- if you think that most of this or all of this is coming from China, what is Xi Jinping thinking? I mean, this is not good. This looks like China does not have its act together.

Are these things going to continue to drift into US and Canadian airspace because they're already floating around up there and they can't be recalled? Or are these deliberate provocations? But this is not good for China. And obviously, it's a major chill on US-Chinese relations.

BRIAN SOZZI: Well, Rick, it can't be good for President Biden either. Now, you're seeing Republicans use this as an opportunity to attack his leadership. Is it something that will have staying power and hurt any potential re-election, you know, things he would like to achieve?

RICK NEWMAN: Well, notice what's happened with-- there is a difference between the first big balloon that drifted all the way across the United States before they shot it down and these other ones. So Biden's now, pow, pow, pow, he's shooting them down all over the place, right? So is that a response to Republicans who said he wasn't-- you know, he wasn't aggressive enough by not shooting down the first one right off the bat? I don't know.

Honestly, I would love to see them try to capture a couple of these things if they can. They may have some technology where you can sort of get these things into a net. They have been able to do that with satellites in the past. But, you know, it's an interesting question. To what extent do the intelligence people say, we would love to have one of these things intact to be able to figure out what it is, without having to deal with, you know, wreckage and debris. And the political side and the White House is saying, we can't afford that politically. We just have to look tough on these things.

This is gonna play out over weeks and months, even if there are no more of these things. We're-- I think we're probably gonna get some assessments from the intelligence people. Some of that will be classified, but they really need to say something publicly about what's going on here. There probably will be more briefings for Congress, perhaps some hearings. So we're gonna learn a lot more about this.

JULIE HYMAN: They just need to strap a jet pack on somebody and send them up there, you know, an airman and send them up there to take some photos and video of the thing. Come on, it seems pretty straightforward here, Rick.

RICK NEWMAN: Well, I mean, but let's be real, they are doing that. I mean, they are flying U-2-- you know, the old U-2, which can go--

JULIE HYMAN: Right, I mean they must have pictures of these things before they shoot them down.

RICK NEWMAN: Absolutely. So that's what everybody is not thinking about this. They are-- they are looking as closely as they can at these things. You know, the old U-2 from the Cold War days, that can fly, I think, as high as 80,000 feet. It can stay up there for a long time. It can take pictures. They have all kinds of other sensors on that airplane-- audio sensors, technical sensors, measurement sensors-- to figure out what these things are doing.

So it's really not the smartest thing to just shoot these out of the sky the moment you know they're there. You would-- it'd be better to learn as much as you can about what they're doing. So to some extent, all these people-- these trigger-happy Republicans saying just shoot at everything, that is not the smartest move, I think, from an intelligence-gathering perspective.

BRIAN SOZZI: Well, keep looking up today, Rick. And please do flag our breaking news channel if you see anything new.

RICK NEWMAN: Got it.

BRIAN SOZZI: Rick Newman, thanks so much. Appreciate it.