>

Or it's actually just a weather balloon.
Chinese spy balloon was watching ‘sensitive military sites’ and program has been targeting US for years

GOP has been complaining that Biden took too long to take action. Biden waited until it could be brought down without risk to others. Trump just let it happen. Three times. Now Republicans are pretending like they don't have a double standard, criticizing Biden but saying nothing about Trump. >

Supposedly Biden wanted to shoot it down days earlier, but the military said it was getting good data from studying what the balloon was transmitting and convinced him to wait >

This is the only explanation that makes sense to me. We waited until it was over the ocean. But also until it was close to leaving US territory. Seems like the military weighed risk / reward and decided surveilling the surveillance balloon as absolutely long as possible was what they decided. >

and they still get to pick it up and see what it was was on it.  the fact that this happened at least 3 times during rumps time in office and nothing was done should scare you. >

People seem surprised that a technologically-advanced adversarial power is spying on us, a gigantic country that’s impossible to surveil? Like we haven’t had spy planes flying overhead since the early Cold War?
I get the outcry and the knee jerk reaction to shoot it down, but a Chinese spy balloon floating at 60k feet is  probably less worrying than all the other Chinese spying currently happening through Tik Tok, hacking, and corporate espionage. >

Remember when a Chinese spy walked right into Mar-a-Lago when TFG was the sitting President? >

Remember when swalwell was banging a Chinese spy? Remember when Feinstein had a Chinese spy as a driver? >

The fbi said salwell had no relationship with the Chinese spy. Not sure why you guys continue with a false narrative. >

Lol the fbi also said Oswald whacked jfk, and James earl ray hit mlk, so not always too reliable there >

I'm just trying to figure out why you guys refuse to admit Tucker, Hannity etc lied to you about salwell? >

Because accepting the reality that their main news source lied about one thing is the first crack in the glass of their worldview that Fox is not the same 'lying mainstream media' they claim to hate. You can't expect them to willingly shatter their whole inner reality of their own volition. They aren't self aware enough for that. >

Well they had reason to believe they could operate with impunity, because Trump has allowed it. >

They know 100% they shouldn’t have been doing it then and they shouldn’t be doing it now.
Just because Trump didn’t do shit about it didn’t meant they thought it was all perfectly acceptable. >

This doesn't cause any anxiety response in me.
Russia has been flying spy satellites over us for a long time. If it's electronic surveillance of frequencies I'd be a little more concerned but I think it would be cheaper and easier to just send a few student spies over here with some receivers. 
The whole thing looks so amateurish and clunky that I could see how it really could just be collecting weather data. Regardless, if it's flying in our airspace without prior permission then we should shoot it down. Done and done. >

The simplest explanation to me is that they just wanted to see how we'd respond to something flying over our airspace. I mean the Chinese are kinda slapdash in how they construct their shit but they're not stupid. >

You know, when I was first notified about this story I think I had a normal reaction. One of slight curiousity and intrigue and the merest feeling of unease, a very minor unsettling feeling, and then it went away. I scanned an article or two and satisfied my curiosity. I also understood that while alarming, this isn't unprecedented  and it doesn't untangle the fabric of our foreign relationships. 
But one brief look at how Republicans are reacting to this same story, and you'd think Armageddon is approaching. >

No shit. They also said they can easily make the instrumentation useless too while over our airspace. >

I’m really enjoying how next level embarrassed the Chinese are by this. Apparently they thought this would work and now they’re making up anything they think will work in order to deny spying on the US. >

I'm old enough to remember when the Chinese said it was just a civilian weather balloon, no need to worry.  I hope that precision hit on the balloon made them feel a little less safe in Beijing. >

Cut the strings on their fancy toy with surgical precision using an IR missile.
The subtle display of capability in that strike is likely lost on 99.9% of people on reddit, but trust me, the CCP understands. >

Everyone says it’s overkill, but if we overkill a ballon imagine what would happen if you launched a ground assault… yeah >

I wonder what excuses the Chinese going to use once its confirmed that the balloon was loaded with surveillance equipment >

I overheard some Qanons saying this is how they delivered Covid to the US >

Lol. Under Trump then. >

That's kinda how spying and espionage generally works. Using a big ass, slow-moving balloon is a little unorthodox, but they are probably expendable. What are balloons going for these days? >

Ah, so that means Trump was just letting it happen under his watch, huh? Fucking traitor. >

Of course their spying on the US. What do you think Tik Tok is? >

Explains why they waited until it was over water.  If you think of just how much open space and nothing we have between cities in this country, they could have safely taken it down easily. What they wanted was a water landing to keep the instrument package more intact. >

Even rural areas have houses, and dropping it over a rural area carries some risk. Plus it’s not like they were getting anything they didn’t already have from spy satellites so it wasn’t a huge deal. Even less if we really were able to jam it while it was in our airspace. >

And where doe the ballistic missile land? >

Because Trump allowed it to happen. Biden had the balls to take it down. He initially wanted it down once it got into our airspace but was too dangerous over land. >

What I dont understand it why would China was any sort of altercation with the USA, wouldn't a war with USA dramatically hurt their economy?  Who would shoot their best customer? >

None of it makes sense. The only explanation that seems to make any sense is that the Chinese lost control of a malfunctioning spy balloon.