‘Pentagon spokesperson Brigadier General Pat Ryder said on Thursday that the US was "aware that [the balloon] had intelligence collection capabilities". But "it has been our assessment now that it did not collect while it was transiting the United States or over flying the United States".’

When did the pentagon confirm it was not a spy balloon? The article is very short and the meaning is clear, it doesn’t say anything about whether the pentagon thinks it’s a spy balloon.

> Pentagon spokesperson Brigadier General Pat Ryder said on Thursday that the US was "aware that [the balloon] had intelligence collection capabilities". ... He said the efforts the US took to mitigate any intelligence gathering "contributed" to the balloon's failure to gather sensitive information.

So it was a spy balloon but it was off, or it was a spy balloon and on and we outsmarted it, or it was a spy balloon and it malfunctioned at least in part.

Nothing in that source suggests that it was not a spy balloon.