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I feel like they only shot the balloon down due to the public making a massive fuss. Three of these flew over the USA during the Trump administration, and whilst I can't speak for his competence, I doubt Pentagon officials would have let it slide if it was actually anything to worry about.
That's exactly right. I'm not sure what the pushback on this issue is? To me, it is plain and simple; they violated airspace, and could not retract the vehicle. Accident or not, it should be removed so it does not continue to violate the airspace. The move to wait for it over the water was to avoid collateral damage. 
I'm not sure what the controversy here is, aside from China crying foul. >

Theres no way you can spin it's presence in US airspace as accidental when the ground track plastered all over the news literally took it precisely over 2 US nuclear missile silo fields and Missouri where the B-2 is based. >

The balloon is unpowered, so I’m actually quite impressed that they managed to use the natural wind to make it fly over military bases precisely.
EDIT: By “unpowered” I was talking as an aviation term, which means the balloon is not primarily moved by a jet engine or a propeller. It may have propellers for course correction though as someone pointed out.
The power supply for the equipment is not what I was thinking about. >

They’re testing the water to see how the US reacts. >

That's secondary to the primary mission it had. The balloon had a gigantic payload of sensors and probably other equipment. It was so large that it could have, for example, been the largest ground-penetrating radar in the world. It could have analyzed all of the EM communications going on in order to analyze US communication networks to better understand them so that they can be hacked or jammed in the future.
There are a lot of things the balloon could accomplish that Chinese satellites could not. >

Now the question is if the US jammed the sensors so it couldn’t get/send the data it was collecting. >

Supposedly there were AWACS jets circling it all week jamming and/or listening to everything it was trying to transmit back to China.
I really don't think we would've let it fly over half the country if we didn't have reason to. It's not like it was difficult to shoot it down in the end, and if it was doing any real harm to us, we would've popped it over NYC if we had to. >

If collateral damage were the only reason they waited to down it, they could have just downed it over bumfucknowhere Alaska anyway. >

How about balloon wars? Each balloon gets fitted with a 6’ pokey thing that can pop the others. >

All those hours of Nintendo Balloon Fight finally pays off. >

You have been chosen as a champion to represent your country, are you ready?