Your assertion is not supported by your source:

> 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.