When my team started pitching me last night on a Chinese balloon story, I texted back: “We don’t do UFOs on our show.” Whoops, kind of got that wrong, didn’t I?

The situation with the Chinese balloon is dominating the news, as it should. This is a huge breakdown in our national security. So far neither the White House nor the Department of Defense knows what to do about it. This is first and foremost a China story.

Our principal adversary sent this big balloon to spy on us — in particular to spy on our nuclear missile silos in Montana, but also there are key military bases with active nuclear missile wings in nearby Wyoming and North Dakota, and there are top-secret military bases with deactivated missile wings also in North Dakota, nearby South Dakota, and Missouri.  

This Chinese spy balloon started over the Aleutian islands in Alaska, which also has sensitive military bases, and so far we haven’t done a thing about any of this. The balloon is still up there. The semi-paralyzed Biden administration has pulled Secretary Blinken’s China trip off the books, but that balloon is still up there spying on America.

The Chinese communist government is telling us not to worry, it’s really a “civilian weather” balloon doing some research. Kind of blown off course.

This of course is utter nonsense. First of all, civilian aircraft is an oxymoron in China. It’s all run by the government. All instrumentalities are run by the government — the Chinese Communist Party.

Second of all, it has nothing to do with the weather, unless you’re terribly worried about the February weather in Montana and not the top-secret military bases nearby. Wait a minute, though: Our climate tsar, John Kerry, is terribly worried about China and its climate policies, which we know are virtually nonexistent, and he’s been acting on his own to make some kind of climate deal with the Chinese communists that no one knows about. 

Maybe somebody needs to corral Mr. Kerry.

Meanwhile, this Chinese spying balloon looks to be checking up on our land-based nuclear defense missiles situated in silos under the ground. Remember, America’s triad defense against nuclear missiles is land-, sea-, and air-based. You can’t see the silos, but you might be able to see parking lots or little huts or gates.

It’s mostly farmland, though, which is why I don’t understand our defense department. It says it can’t shoot down the balloon because the debris would land on people on the ground. This is Montana: There isn’t anyone on the ground. There’s no speed limit in the state, and you can drive for hours without seeing anybody. At least in the central and the eastern part of Montana.

The U.S has the capacity to just capture the balloon and bring it down, but it’s not doing that either. Not for the first time, the Biden administration is paralyzed in its response to dictator-led enemies.

I’m assuming that the Republican House is going to start calling for retaliation against China as soon as possible, and hopefully there will be some bipartisan support for this.

Yet the Bidens, who started out relatively tough on China — more or less following President Trump’s legacy — lately have been talking about lifting tariffs on Chinese imports even though the trade deficit is still close to $400 billion. We are still allowing the purchases of some Chinese semiconductor chips and other so-called nonstrategic products.

Mr. Biden met with President Xi and never talked about the original source of killer Covid: China. We don’t have a clear policy regarding Taiwan, and in recent days a top general has suggested Beijing will invade Taiwan in just a few years.

Also in recent days, the radical greenies in the Biden administration have done China a big favor by ruling out the development of mining in Minnesota’s iron range, where valuable resources of lithium, copper, and nickel would be available for electric car batteries — so we didn’t have to buy everything from China, which has cornered the world’s mineral supply.

So, you tell me: We can’t even knock out a lousy spy balloon? Do we look weak on the world stage? Do we have a serious China policy? 

From Mr. Kudlow’s broadcast on Fox Business News.