Re: the China Balloon over the U.S: @journeywithme2 I agree that the China balloon is concerning. The Chinese aren't so sloppy as to accidentally launch a weather balloon in our airspace, as they claimed it was.
Does anyone else have a reaction to the balloon caper?
Intellectually, as opposed to intuitively, I wish that we could have captured instead of destroying it to see what they are up to.
Not good, is my hunch. China is also voraciously buying up the world's natural resources and are even starting to buy farmland in the US.
https://americanmilitarynews.com/2022/11/video-china-buying-us-farmland-near-military-bases/
https://marketrealist.com/real-estate/why-is-china-buying-us-farmland/
@raincloud It was essentially captured. The only part destroyed by the fighter jet was the actual balloon. The device splashed down in the shallows off NC at a depth of about 47 feet and will be recovered for analysis.
Good, I didn't realize how large that sucker was, "about the size of three school buses!!" Um, did the Chinese not think that we would notice?
I hope the salt water doesn't ruin the technology too much to analyze it.
Not a good harbinger, me thinks, whatever it holds.
@jeanne-mayell I have to say it makes me very uneasy that they were so blatant with it. The 3 they sent across and higher up out of sight of average people during TFG years and how the media is now jumping all over and fomenting " outrage" all over it and How it came in on the heels of our government banning Tik Tok usage on all staff phones and how beings like MTG using and bending the facts to fit their narrative disturb me deeply. Looking to hear more about the one over Latin America.
@journeywithme2 This Politico story gives the best information so far on the balloon. It came over Alaska but when did the US Military know it was there? Mixed answers so far.
The US Military claims they shielded the balloon's equipment from getting sensitive information but didn't explain how they did that, especially when it navigated it's way over Montana, which is home to Malmstrom Air Force Base, one of three sites that operate and maintain the nation’s silo-based intercontinental ballistic missiles.
I am majorly creeped out by this situation and am wondering about the wisdom of giving it a seven day trip over the U.S. before shooting it down. Yes, by not shooting it down they were able to recover it in tact and analyze it and avoid hurting anyone. But what do we know about senstive information they were able to get from it? And how does the US remedy that situation?
By the way, while the Republicans criticized Biden for not shooting it down earlier, there are mulitple times that Chinese balloons flew over the US during the Trump administration who chose not to shoot them down.
@jeanne-mayell agreed - and that's what I meant by the 3 during the former guy's years.
yep ... more going on than meets the eye here.
We will likely never know when the US military first realized what it was and started tracking it, and I'm sure there's a lot of other things that we'll never know about this. However, let's be sensible here and not get ourselves worked up over it.
First, China, the US, and Russia have been spying on each other for decades with everything from actual people to high orbit, ultra-sensitive satellites. The military bases and nuclear installations in Montana and elsewhere are perfectly visible, even from Google Earth. China knew they were there. China also already knows what the US is capable of militarily and on the nuclear front, and if anyone thinks they don't, they're being naïve.
Second, if you go to Amazon, you can buy a literal pepper grinder that has wi-fi blocking technology embedded in it (for those families who can't get the kids to get off their phones for ten minutes to have a nice family dinner). I think it's safe to say that if the general public has ready access to that level of tech, it's a pretty good bet that the US military has blocking/scanning technologies and capabilities that we literally can't even imagine. It's also a good bet that those technologies can be implemented and used at any given point in the US and its territories. That being the case, does anyone really think that such technologies would not have been deployed within seconds - minutes at the most - over any part of US territory, especially over one of the most secure military installations in the country, and used continuously while the object was over US (and Canadian) territory?
So why would China send a balloon when they have other tech? Maybe they were hoping to intercept unprotected communications on the cell network. Perhaps they were testing the US SIGINT (signals intelligence) and small object tracking capabilities. I have no idea, but TFG let them get away with it at least three times during his time in office, so perhaps they thought it would be ignored this time, too.
The object will be recovered and fully analyzed by the appropriate departments in the government and the military. It will be damaged from falling into and being submerged in the ocean, but I'm sure the military and other spy orgs in the US gov't have the capability to still fully analyze it and determine what information (if any) it was able to monitor/gather. The military probably already knows what the object is and what information was gathered. I can assure you that Chinese authorities are not happy about their equipment being intercepted. The US State Department has already cancelled a diplomatic meeting in China over this incident, a meeting that, according to several diplomacy watchers, China was really looking forward to for a lot of reasons. In my opinion, this is SOP for spycraft, and as such is pretty much a big nothing-burger.
I agree with everything you said except the nothing-burger bit. The fact that the episode is sizzling in the public realm indicates that to me. I heard one former military commentator opine that this is a collosal misstep made by folks who eluded the ususal oversight systems. He thinks it might show that Xi is not in total control of his minions.
I doubt that we regular citizens will ever know what is really going on but I wish the economy would deflate as fast as that balloon did. 😉
More information from the DOD about the balloon incident. They apparently knew about it in late January when it was off the coast of Alaska, but did not deem it to be a threat at the time.
And a transcript of the DOD press conference about it: