The big bad balloon floating over the USA at 60,000 feet or more was a real stroke of luck for the wacko war-mongers in Washington. After 4-5 years of bad-mouthing China this was a perfect opportunity for more anti-China propaganda (Trump started it but at least he was not advocating a hot war).
It’s likely that we knew the balloon was harmless from the git-go but after the Media revealed its’ existence to the public, we simply shot it down for public relations reasons. If we had reason to believe it was a danger then we would be justified in doing so.
The wacko war mongers revealed who they are by jumping up and down and screaming their heads off. We know who they are anyway.
I’m not saying that it is perfectly fine for China to fly balloons over the USA (also remember that you don’t steer balloons), but we have had spy planes flying as close as they can to the China coast for years and years. We also have intelligence gathering ships sailing the Taiwan straits, etc. It’s the game everybody plays.
Do you really think that China was going to attack the USA with that balloon? A lot of commenters on the internet were suggesting the balloon might be carrying some kind of EMP device, or maybe a nuclear weapon or Covid 20. LOL. No country is going to attack the USA knowing the response they would get. For that matter, no nation state other than Japan (80yrs ago) has EVER attacked the USA (Bet you thought Germany did so in WWW2. Nope.) Sad to say, we always do the attacking.
Colonel Macgregor:
See you next time