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American’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time.
Foreign nations, culture, masks. You name it.
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[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war"
] |
>
Imagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it
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[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it."
] |
>
Looks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it"
] |
>
I bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!"
] |
>
This whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think."
] |
>
Can they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down"
] |
>
This country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?"
] |
>
Wouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!"
] |
>
Hot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII"
] |
>
China: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare."
] |
>
Ok ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!"
] |
>
The Chinese government can shove it.
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot."
] |
>
Oh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it."
] |
>
I’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk."
] |
>
Can’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?"
] |
>
Due to a violation of American airspace
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?"
] |
>
Well the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace"
] |
>
No china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens"
] |
>
I wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it ."
] |
>
It shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china."
] |
>
An unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?"
] |
>
So this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything."
] |
>
The fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?"
] |
>
This whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding."
] |
>
Dear China,
FUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT.
Sincerely,
Joe
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry."
] |
>
If it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe"
] |
>
Because China won't have any weather without their balloon
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?"
] |
>
Hilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon"
] |
>
The thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon."
] |
>
china go fuck yourself
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you."
] |
>
China: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.
US: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so.
China: I can't believe you've done this.
Did I get that right?
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself"
] |
>
admits it got away after getting expose in media
They only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?"
] |
>
Really? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission."
] |
>
Why are they so concerned about an errant "weather balloon" being destroyed? Hmmm
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game."
] |
>
China… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm"
] |
>
thought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?
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[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…"
] |
>
Well it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?"
] |
>
like China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons."
] |
>
We should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business."
] |
>
Oh that’s rich
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon"
] |
>
Ok the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich"
] |
>
Chinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine."
] |
>
Relax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name."
] |
>
US: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?
China: Why were you looking at my phone!?
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake."
] |
>
Have some ice cream, Xi.
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?"
] |
>
How dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi."
] |
>
What's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers"
] |
>
After the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?"
] |
>
Oh China, go fuck yourself.
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?",
">\n\nAfter the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous"
] |
>
So exciting, going to war over a hot air balloon
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?",
">\n\nAfter the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous",
">\n\nOh China, go fuck yourself."
] |
>
I think China wanted the US to down it right away so they could paint America as hysterical and trigger happy and violent. When that didn’t happen, it looks like they didn’t have a plan B, so just nonsensically went with the original narrative leaving everyone to scratch their heads. It’s like when they got themselves kicked out of the Nobel ceremony and had their own, or when trumps team mistakenly held a press conference in a lawn store.
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?",
">\n\nAfter the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous",
">\n\nOh China, go fuck yourself.",
">\n\nSo exciting, going to war over a hot air balloon"
] |
>
We hurt winnie the poohs feelings :(
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?",
">\n\nAfter the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous",
">\n\nOh China, go fuck yourself.",
">\n\nSo exciting, going to war over a hot air balloon",
">\n\nI think China wanted the US to down it right away so they could paint America as hysterical and trigger happy and violent. When that didn’t happen, it looks like they didn’t have a plan B, so just nonsensically went with the original narrative leaving everyone to scratch their heads. It’s like when they got themselves kicked out of the Nobel ceremony and had their own, or when trumps team mistakenly held a press conference in a lawn store."
] |
>
I see a lot of posts about trump letting three balloons float around. I do not want to seem like a conspiracy theorist but here it goes. Trump if he is a Russia shill for Putin is also a shill for china it doesn't take that much brain power to make that connection being that both Russia and china work together often times. The tariffs against china during the trump administration were an intentional economic slight against the American public to weaken our economic ability to address an attack on either Ukraine or Taiwan.
Specifically toward our farm exports and imports but also largely steel and aluminum. This is a deflection of course in order to take the spot light off of Russian aggression and to hamstring our ability to be in a strong economic position this also on the heels of the pandemic which was not an expected factor of course but obliterated the global supply chain causing extreme economic strife. You could argue that it was intentional but that is wacky and far right bullshit. Now that the tariffs are out of the way we can then look at. The next piece which is the war in Ukraine. Trump committed to false election claims that inspired right wing nut jobs to storm the capitol and if successful would have prevented our government from not only transitioning a new presidency but could have made our government ineffective to move on Russia invading Ukraine and potentially China invading Taiwan being that they could transition imports and exports to a newly revitalized war machine in Russia that successful stormed Ukraine taking 16 percent of the maize and 10 percent of the global wheat. Enough to cause a myriad of problems for the united states and force them into a more insular posture because of the domestic issues at home coupled with such a large loss of exported crops from Ukraine.
There is a ton more to this i imagine. but then we get to the balloon fiasco. Trump allowed Three such balloons to go across the united states without a word. Why is that? ignorance? intention? likely the latter. Being unsure as to what these balloons were collecting or depositing we can imagine they could have been doing anything of significance. Now if we want to do some crazy shit we could say the avian bird flu seems to have come about with some serious audacity. Is it the balloons? maybe which is why they opted to shoot it down in the water and not over land. This is just one possibility with the balloons. Another is that they were monitoring something else. Which is the more likely scenario. I think someone needs to google maps the locations in which is was floating and we can really determine what this particular balloon was doing. Or maybe it is just a communications or weather balloon. Anything is possible in my mind. Everything I have written is likely not the case but it does seem like that is a lot more to this puzzle then we are seeing. We are getting lost in the trees and not seeing the forest sadly because it is a constant barrage of bullshit.
Anyway, I think that Russia, China, Trump and others who follow him are seeking to undermine our government and sow chaos for both Russia and China. There are just too many connections that make sense and I have touched on Two maybe connections. I just wonder what the government is not telling us and how far a long they really are in dealing with these things.
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?",
">\n\nAfter the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous",
">\n\nOh China, go fuck yourself.",
">\n\nSo exciting, going to war over a hot air balloon",
">\n\nI think China wanted the US to down it right away so they could paint America as hysterical and trigger happy and violent. When that didn’t happen, it looks like they didn’t have a plan B, so just nonsensically went with the original narrative leaving everyone to scratch their heads. It’s like when they got themselves kicked out of the Nobel ceremony and had their own, or when trumps team mistakenly held a press conference in a lawn store.",
">\n\nWe hurt winnie the poohs feelings :("
] |
>
Now that Republicans know that Trump allowed three Chinese CCP balloons pass across the US during his tenure, they will now start railing on Biden for daring China and possible war by blowing up the CCP balloon.
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[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?",
">\n\nAfter the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous",
">\n\nOh China, go fuck yourself.",
">\n\nSo exciting, going to war over a hot air balloon",
">\n\nI think China wanted the US to down it right away so they could paint America as hysterical and trigger happy and violent. When that didn’t happen, it looks like they didn’t have a plan B, so just nonsensically went with the original narrative leaving everyone to scratch their heads. It’s like when they got themselves kicked out of the Nobel ceremony and had their own, or when trumps team mistakenly held a press conference in a lawn store.",
">\n\nWe hurt winnie the poohs feelings :(",
">\n\nI see a lot of posts about trump letting three balloons float around. I do not want to seem like a conspiracy theorist but here it goes. Trump if he is a Russia shill for Putin is also a shill for china it doesn't take that much brain power to make that connection being that both Russia and china work together often times. The tariffs against china during the trump administration were an intentional economic slight against the American public to weaken our economic ability to address an attack on either Ukraine or Taiwan. \nSpecifically toward our farm exports and imports but also largely steel and aluminum. This is a deflection of course in order to take the spot light off of Russian aggression and to hamstring our ability to be in a strong economic position this also on the heels of the pandemic which was not an expected factor of course but obliterated the global supply chain causing extreme economic strife. You could argue that it was intentional but that is wacky and far right bullshit. Now that the tariffs are out of the way we can then look at. The next piece which is the war in Ukraine. Trump committed to false election claims that inspired right wing nut jobs to storm the capitol and if successful would have prevented our government from not only transitioning a new presidency but could have made our government ineffective to move on Russia invading Ukraine and potentially China invading Taiwan being that they could transition imports and exports to a newly revitalized war machine in Russia that successful stormed Ukraine taking 16 percent of the maize and 10 percent of the global wheat. Enough to cause a myriad of problems for the united states and force them into a more insular posture because of the domestic issues at home coupled with such a large loss of exported crops from Ukraine. \nThere is a ton more to this i imagine. but then we get to the balloon fiasco. Trump allowed Three such balloons to go across the united states without a word. Why is that? ignorance? intention? likely the latter. Being unsure as to what these balloons were collecting or depositing we can imagine they could have been doing anything of significance. Now if we want to do some crazy shit we could say the avian bird flu seems to have come about with some serious audacity. Is it the balloons? maybe which is why they opted to shoot it down in the water and not over land. This is just one possibility with the balloons. Another is that they were monitoring something else. Which is the more likely scenario. I think someone needs to google maps the locations in which is was floating and we can really determine what this particular balloon was doing. Or maybe it is just a communications or weather balloon. Anything is possible in my mind. Everything I have written is likely not the case but it does seem like that is a lot more to this puzzle then we are seeing. We are getting lost in the trees and not seeing the forest sadly because it is a constant barrage of bullshit. \nAnyway, I think that Russia, China, Trump and others who follow him are seeking to undermine our government and sow chaos for both Russia and China. There are just too many connections that make sense and I have touched on Two maybe connections. I just wonder what the government is not telling us and how far a long they really are in dealing with these things."
] |
>
In fairness, three times during the Trump administration, China sent a balloon over the US, to no response. It might seem reasonable that we've decided to ignore stuff that's inconvenient to deal with.
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?",
">\n\nAfter the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous",
">\n\nOh China, go fuck yourself.",
">\n\nSo exciting, going to war over a hot air balloon",
">\n\nI think China wanted the US to down it right away so they could paint America as hysterical and trigger happy and violent. When that didn’t happen, it looks like they didn’t have a plan B, so just nonsensically went with the original narrative leaving everyone to scratch their heads. It’s like when they got themselves kicked out of the Nobel ceremony and had their own, or when trumps team mistakenly held a press conference in a lawn store.",
">\n\nWe hurt winnie the poohs feelings :(",
">\n\nI see a lot of posts about trump letting three balloons float around. I do not want to seem like a conspiracy theorist but here it goes. Trump if he is a Russia shill for Putin is also a shill for china it doesn't take that much brain power to make that connection being that both Russia and china work together often times. The tariffs against china during the trump administration were an intentional economic slight against the American public to weaken our economic ability to address an attack on either Ukraine or Taiwan. \nSpecifically toward our farm exports and imports but also largely steel and aluminum. This is a deflection of course in order to take the spot light off of Russian aggression and to hamstring our ability to be in a strong economic position this also on the heels of the pandemic which was not an expected factor of course but obliterated the global supply chain causing extreme economic strife. You could argue that it was intentional but that is wacky and far right bullshit. Now that the tariffs are out of the way we can then look at. The next piece which is the war in Ukraine. Trump committed to false election claims that inspired right wing nut jobs to storm the capitol and if successful would have prevented our government from not only transitioning a new presidency but could have made our government ineffective to move on Russia invading Ukraine and potentially China invading Taiwan being that they could transition imports and exports to a newly revitalized war machine in Russia that successful stormed Ukraine taking 16 percent of the maize and 10 percent of the global wheat. Enough to cause a myriad of problems for the united states and force them into a more insular posture because of the domestic issues at home coupled with such a large loss of exported crops from Ukraine. \nThere is a ton more to this i imagine. but then we get to the balloon fiasco. Trump allowed Three such balloons to go across the united states without a word. Why is that? ignorance? intention? likely the latter. Being unsure as to what these balloons were collecting or depositing we can imagine they could have been doing anything of significance. Now if we want to do some crazy shit we could say the avian bird flu seems to have come about with some serious audacity. Is it the balloons? maybe which is why they opted to shoot it down in the water and not over land. This is just one possibility with the balloons. Another is that they were monitoring something else. Which is the more likely scenario. I think someone needs to google maps the locations in which is was floating and we can really determine what this particular balloon was doing. Or maybe it is just a communications or weather balloon. Anything is possible in my mind. Everything I have written is likely not the case but it does seem like that is a lot more to this puzzle then we are seeing. We are getting lost in the trees and not seeing the forest sadly because it is a constant barrage of bullshit. \nAnyway, I think that Russia, China, Trump and others who follow him are seeking to undermine our government and sow chaos for both Russia and China. There are just too many connections that make sense and I have touched on Two maybe connections. I just wonder what the government is not telling us and how far a long they really are in dealing with these things.",
">\n\nNow that Republicans know that Trump allowed three Chinese CCP balloons pass across the US during his tenure, they will now start railing on Biden for daring China and possible war by blowing up the CCP balloon."
] |
>
I completely understand china’s stance here. They should be able to surveil other countries with out repercussion because the obvious unspoken law of “China can do whatever it wants” wasn’t taken into account. Obviously if another country attempted to do the same i’m they couldn’t because of the other unspoken law of. “You’re not china”
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?",
">\n\nAfter the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous",
">\n\nOh China, go fuck yourself.",
">\n\nSo exciting, going to war over a hot air balloon",
">\n\nI think China wanted the US to down it right away so they could paint America as hysterical and trigger happy and violent. When that didn’t happen, it looks like they didn’t have a plan B, so just nonsensically went with the original narrative leaving everyone to scratch their heads. It’s like when they got themselves kicked out of the Nobel ceremony and had their own, or when trumps team mistakenly held a press conference in a lawn store.",
">\n\nWe hurt winnie the poohs feelings :(",
">\n\nI see a lot of posts about trump letting three balloons float around. I do not want to seem like a conspiracy theorist but here it goes. Trump if he is a Russia shill for Putin is also a shill for china it doesn't take that much brain power to make that connection being that both Russia and china work together often times. The tariffs against china during the trump administration were an intentional economic slight against the American public to weaken our economic ability to address an attack on either Ukraine or Taiwan. \nSpecifically toward our farm exports and imports but also largely steel and aluminum. This is a deflection of course in order to take the spot light off of Russian aggression and to hamstring our ability to be in a strong economic position this also on the heels of the pandemic which was not an expected factor of course but obliterated the global supply chain causing extreme economic strife. You could argue that it was intentional but that is wacky and far right bullshit. Now that the tariffs are out of the way we can then look at. The next piece which is the war in Ukraine. Trump committed to false election claims that inspired right wing nut jobs to storm the capitol and if successful would have prevented our government from not only transitioning a new presidency but could have made our government ineffective to move on Russia invading Ukraine and potentially China invading Taiwan being that they could transition imports and exports to a newly revitalized war machine in Russia that successful stormed Ukraine taking 16 percent of the maize and 10 percent of the global wheat. Enough to cause a myriad of problems for the united states and force them into a more insular posture because of the domestic issues at home coupled with such a large loss of exported crops from Ukraine. \nThere is a ton more to this i imagine. but then we get to the balloon fiasco. Trump allowed Three such balloons to go across the united states without a word. Why is that? ignorance? intention? likely the latter. Being unsure as to what these balloons were collecting or depositing we can imagine they could have been doing anything of significance. Now if we want to do some crazy shit we could say the avian bird flu seems to have come about with some serious audacity. Is it the balloons? maybe which is why they opted to shoot it down in the water and not over land. This is just one possibility with the balloons. Another is that they were monitoring something else. Which is the more likely scenario. I think someone needs to google maps the locations in which is was floating and we can really determine what this particular balloon was doing. Or maybe it is just a communications or weather balloon. Anything is possible in my mind. Everything I have written is likely not the case but it does seem like that is a lot more to this puzzle then we are seeing. We are getting lost in the trees and not seeing the forest sadly because it is a constant barrage of bullshit. \nAnyway, I think that Russia, China, Trump and others who follow him are seeking to undermine our government and sow chaos for both Russia and China. There are just too many connections that make sense and I have touched on Two maybe connections. I just wonder what the government is not telling us and how far a long they really are in dealing with these things.",
">\n\nNow that Republicans know that Trump allowed three Chinese CCP balloons pass across the US during his tenure, they will now start railing on Biden for daring China and possible war by blowing up the CCP balloon.",
">\n\nIn fairness, three times during the Trump administration, China sent a balloon over the US, to no response. It might seem reasonable that we've decided to ignore stuff that's inconvenient to deal with."
] |
>
For shooting a balloon? Man this story is getting weirder and weirder. I'd have thought they just let this one go - what the duck is happening here.
Next thing I know we're going to find out there was an alien involved and there's a secret organization called Xcom
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?",
">\n\nAfter the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous",
">\n\nOh China, go fuck yourself.",
">\n\nSo exciting, going to war over a hot air balloon",
">\n\nI think China wanted the US to down it right away so they could paint America as hysterical and trigger happy and violent. When that didn’t happen, it looks like they didn’t have a plan B, so just nonsensically went with the original narrative leaving everyone to scratch their heads. It’s like when they got themselves kicked out of the Nobel ceremony and had their own, or when trumps team mistakenly held a press conference in a lawn store.",
">\n\nWe hurt winnie the poohs feelings :(",
">\n\nI see a lot of posts about trump letting three balloons float around. I do not want to seem like a conspiracy theorist but here it goes. Trump if he is a Russia shill for Putin is also a shill for china it doesn't take that much brain power to make that connection being that both Russia and china work together often times. The tariffs against china during the trump administration were an intentional economic slight against the American public to weaken our economic ability to address an attack on either Ukraine or Taiwan. \nSpecifically toward our farm exports and imports but also largely steel and aluminum. This is a deflection of course in order to take the spot light off of Russian aggression and to hamstring our ability to be in a strong economic position this also on the heels of the pandemic which was not an expected factor of course but obliterated the global supply chain causing extreme economic strife. You could argue that it was intentional but that is wacky and far right bullshit. Now that the tariffs are out of the way we can then look at. The next piece which is the war in Ukraine. Trump committed to false election claims that inspired right wing nut jobs to storm the capitol and if successful would have prevented our government from not only transitioning a new presidency but could have made our government ineffective to move on Russia invading Ukraine and potentially China invading Taiwan being that they could transition imports and exports to a newly revitalized war machine in Russia that successful stormed Ukraine taking 16 percent of the maize and 10 percent of the global wheat. Enough to cause a myriad of problems for the united states and force them into a more insular posture because of the domestic issues at home coupled with such a large loss of exported crops from Ukraine. \nThere is a ton more to this i imagine. but then we get to the balloon fiasco. Trump allowed Three such balloons to go across the united states without a word. Why is that? ignorance? intention? likely the latter. Being unsure as to what these balloons were collecting or depositing we can imagine they could have been doing anything of significance. Now if we want to do some crazy shit we could say the avian bird flu seems to have come about with some serious audacity. Is it the balloons? maybe which is why they opted to shoot it down in the water and not over land. This is just one possibility with the balloons. Another is that they were monitoring something else. Which is the more likely scenario. I think someone needs to google maps the locations in which is was floating and we can really determine what this particular balloon was doing. Or maybe it is just a communications or weather balloon. Anything is possible in my mind. Everything I have written is likely not the case but it does seem like that is a lot more to this puzzle then we are seeing. We are getting lost in the trees and not seeing the forest sadly because it is a constant barrage of bullshit. \nAnyway, I think that Russia, China, Trump and others who follow him are seeking to undermine our government and sow chaos for both Russia and China. There are just too many connections that make sense and I have touched on Two maybe connections. I just wonder what the government is not telling us and how far a long they really are in dealing with these things.",
">\n\nNow that Republicans know that Trump allowed three Chinese CCP balloons pass across the US during his tenure, they will now start railing on Biden for daring China and possible war by blowing up the CCP balloon.",
">\n\nIn fairness, three times during the Trump administration, China sent a balloon over the US, to no response. It might seem reasonable that we've decided to ignore stuff that's inconvenient to deal with.",
">\n\nI completely understand china’s stance here. They should be able to surveil other countries with out repercussion because the obvious unspoken law of “China can do whatever it wants” wasn’t taken into account. Obviously if another country attempted to do the same i’m they couldn’t because of the other unspoken law of. “You’re not china”"
] |
>
And China flying a spy balloon over the U.S. isn’t “violation of international practice”. Fuck off
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?",
">\n\nAfter the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous",
">\n\nOh China, go fuck yourself.",
">\n\nSo exciting, going to war over a hot air balloon",
">\n\nI think China wanted the US to down it right away so they could paint America as hysterical and trigger happy and violent. When that didn’t happen, it looks like they didn’t have a plan B, so just nonsensically went with the original narrative leaving everyone to scratch their heads. It’s like when they got themselves kicked out of the Nobel ceremony and had their own, or when trumps team mistakenly held a press conference in a lawn store.",
">\n\nWe hurt winnie the poohs feelings :(",
">\n\nI see a lot of posts about trump letting three balloons float around. I do not want to seem like a conspiracy theorist but here it goes. Trump if he is a Russia shill for Putin is also a shill for china it doesn't take that much brain power to make that connection being that both Russia and china work together often times. The tariffs against china during the trump administration were an intentional economic slight against the American public to weaken our economic ability to address an attack on either Ukraine or Taiwan. \nSpecifically toward our farm exports and imports but also largely steel and aluminum. This is a deflection of course in order to take the spot light off of Russian aggression and to hamstring our ability to be in a strong economic position this also on the heels of the pandemic which was not an expected factor of course but obliterated the global supply chain causing extreme economic strife. You could argue that it was intentional but that is wacky and far right bullshit. Now that the tariffs are out of the way we can then look at. The next piece which is the war in Ukraine. Trump committed to false election claims that inspired right wing nut jobs to storm the capitol and if successful would have prevented our government from not only transitioning a new presidency but could have made our government ineffective to move on Russia invading Ukraine and potentially China invading Taiwan being that they could transition imports and exports to a newly revitalized war machine in Russia that successful stormed Ukraine taking 16 percent of the maize and 10 percent of the global wheat. Enough to cause a myriad of problems for the united states and force them into a more insular posture because of the domestic issues at home coupled with such a large loss of exported crops from Ukraine. \nThere is a ton more to this i imagine. but then we get to the balloon fiasco. Trump allowed Three such balloons to go across the united states without a word. Why is that? ignorance? intention? likely the latter. Being unsure as to what these balloons were collecting or depositing we can imagine they could have been doing anything of significance. Now if we want to do some crazy shit we could say the avian bird flu seems to have come about with some serious audacity. Is it the balloons? maybe which is why they opted to shoot it down in the water and not over land. This is just one possibility with the balloons. Another is that they were monitoring something else. Which is the more likely scenario. I think someone needs to google maps the locations in which is was floating and we can really determine what this particular balloon was doing. Or maybe it is just a communications or weather balloon. Anything is possible in my mind. Everything I have written is likely not the case but it does seem like that is a lot more to this puzzle then we are seeing. We are getting lost in the trees and not seeing the forest sadly because it is a constant barrage of bullshit. \nAnyway, I think that Russia, China, Trump and others who follow him are seeking to undermine our government and sow chaos for both Russia and China. There are just too many connections that make sense and I have touched on Two maybe connections. I just wonder what the government is not telling us and how far a long they really are in dealing with these things.",
">\n\nNow that Republicans know that Trump allowed three Chinese CCP balloons pass across the US during his tenure, they will now start railing on Biden for daring China and possible war by blowing up the CCP balloon.",
">\n\nIn fairness, three times during the Trump administration, China sent a balloon over the US, to no response. It might seem reasonable that we've decided to ignore stuff that's inconvenient to deal with.",
">\n\nI completely understand china’s stance here. They should be able to surveil other countries with out repercussion because the obvious unspoken law of “China can do whatever it wants” wasn’t taken into account. Obviously if another country attempted to do the same i’m they couldn’t because of the other unspoken law of. “You’re not china”",
">\n\nFor shooting a balloon? Man this story is getting weirder and weirder. I'd have thought they just let this one go - what the duck is happening here. \nNext thing I know we're going to find out there was an alien involved and there's a secret organization called Xcom"
] |
>
i swear the only group with thinner skin that US conservatives are the CCP.
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?",
">\n\nAfter the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous",
">\n\nOh China, go fuck yourself.",
">\n\nSo exciting, going to war over a hot air balloon",
">\n\nI think China wanted the US to down it right away so they could paint America as hysterical and trigger happy and violent. When that didn’t happen, it looks like they didn’t have a plan B, so just nonsensically went with the original narrative leaving everyone to scratch their heads. It’s like when they got themselves kicked out of the Nobel ceremony and had their own, or when trumps team mistakenly held a press conference in a lawn store.",
">\n\nWe hurt winnie the poohs feelings :(",
">\n\nI see a lot of posts about trump letting three balloons float around. I do not want to seem like a conspiracy theorist but here it goes. Trump if he is a Russia shill for Putin is also a shill for china it doesn't take that much brain power to make that connection being that both Russia and china work together often times. The tariffs against china during the trump administration were an intentional economic slight against the American public to weaken our economic ability to address an attack on either Ukraine or Taiwan. \nSpecifically toward our farm exports and imports but also largely steel and aluminum. This is a deflection of course in order to take the spot light off of Russian aggression and to hamstring our ability to be in a strong economic position this also on the heels of the pandemic which was not an expected factor of course but obliterated the global supply chain causing extreme economic strife. You could argue that it was intentional but that is wacky and far right bullshit. Now that the tariffs are out of the way we can then look at. The next piece which is the war in Ukraine. Trump committed to false election claims that inspired right wing nut jobs to storm the capitol and if successful would have prevented our government from not only transitioning a new presidency but could have made our government ineffective to move on Russia invading Ukraine and potentially China invading Taiwan being that they could transition imports and exports to a newly revitalized war machine in Russia that successful stormed Ukraine taking 16 percent of the maize and 10 percent of the global wheat. Enough to cause a myriad of problems for the united states and force them into a more insular posture because of the domestic issues at home coupled with such a large loss of exported crops from Ukraine. \nThere is a ton more to this i imagine. but then we get to the balloon fiasco. Trump allowed Three such balloons to go across the united states without a word. Why is that? ignorance? intention? likely the latter. Being unsure as to what these balloons were collecting or depositing we can imagine they could have been doing anything of significance. Now if we want to do some crazy shit we could say the avian bird flu seems to have come about with some serious audacity. Is it the balloons? maybe which is why they opted to shoot it down in the water and not over land. This is just one possibility with the balloons. Another is that they were monitoring something else. Which is the more likely scenario. I think someone needs to google maps the locations in which is was floating and we can really determine what this particular balloon was doing. Or maybe it is just a communications or weather balloon. Anything is possible in my mind. Everything I have written is likely not the case but it does seem like that is a lot more to this puzzle then we are seeing. We are getting lost in the trees and not seeing the forest sadly because it is a constant barrage of bullshit. \nAnyway, I think that Russia, China, Trump and others who follow him are seeking to undermine our government and sow chaos for both Russia and China. There are just too many connections that make sense and I have touched on Two maybe connections. I just wonder what the government is not telling us and how far a long they really are in dealing with these things.",
">\n\nNow that Republicans know that Trump allowed three Chinese CCP balloons pass across the US during his tenure, they will now start railing on Biden for daring China and possible war by blowing up the CCP balloon.",
">\n\nIn fairness, three times during the Trump administration, China sent a balloon over the US, to no response. It might seem reasonable that we've decided to ignore stuff that's inconvenient to deal with.",
">\n\nI completely understand china’s stance here. They should be able to surveil other countries with out repercussion because the obvious unspoken law of “China can do whatever it wants” wasn’t taken into account. Obviously if another country attempted to do the same i’m they couldn’t because of the other unspoken law of. “You’re not china”",
">\n\nFor shooting a balloon? Man this story is getting weirder and weirder. I'd have thought they just let this one go - what the duck is happening here. \nNext thing I know we're going to find out there was an alien involved and there's a secret organization called Xcom",
">\n\nAnd China flying a spy balloon over the U.S. isn’t “violation of international practice”. Fuck off"
] |
>
China, do us all a favor and fuck off. Your country is a god damn disaster right now.
*How much of a disaster are they?
China’s so fucked up that they make the us congress look like a highly functional institution.
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?",
">\n\nAfter the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous",
">\n\nOh China, go fuck yourself.",
">\n\nSo exciting, going to war over a hot air balloon",
">\n\nI think China wanted the US to down it right away so they could paint America as hysterical and trigger happy and violent. When that didn’t happen, it looks like they didn’t have a plan B, so just nonsensically went with the original narrative leaving everyone to scratch their heads. It’s like when they got themselves kicked out of the Nobel ceremony and had their own, or when trumps team mistakenly held a press conference in a lawn store.",
">\n\nWe hurt winnie the poohs feelings :(",
">\n\nI see a lot of posts about trump letting three balloons float around. I do not want to seem like a conspiracy theorist but here it goes. Trump if he is a Russia shill for Putin is also a shill for china it doesn't take that much brain power to make that connection being that both Russia and china work together often times. The tariffs against china during the trump administration were an intentional economic slight against the American public to weaken our economic ability to address an attack on either Ukraine or Taiwan. \nSpecifically toward our farm exports and imports but also largely steel and aluminum. This is a deflection of course in order to take the spot light off of Russian aggression and to hamstring our ability to be in a strong economic position this also on the heels of the pandemic which was not an expected factor of course but obliterated the global supply chain causing extreme economic strife. You could argue that it was intentional but that is wacky and far right bullshit. Now that the tariffs are out of the way we can then look at. The next piece which is the war in Ukraine. Trump committed to false election claims that inspired right wing nut jobs to storm the capitol and if successful would have prevented our government from not only transitioning a new presidency but could have made our government ineffective to move on Russia invading Ukraine and potentially China invading Taiwan being that they could transition imports and exports to a newly revitalized war machine in Russia that successful stormed Ukraine taking 16 percent of the maize and 10 percent of the global wheat. Enough to cause a myriad of problems for the united states and force them into a more insular posture because of the domestic issues at home coupled with such a large loss of exported crops from Ukraine. \nThere is a ton more to this i imagine. but then we get to the balloon fiasco. Trump allowed Three such balloons to go across the united states without a word. Why is that? ignorance? intention? likely the latter. Being unsure as to what these balloons were collecting or depositing we can imagine they could have been doing anything of significance. Now if we want to do some crazy shit we could say the avian bird flu seems to have come about with some serious audacity. Is it the balloons? maybe which is why they opted to shoot it down in the water and not over land. This is just one possibility with the balloons. Another is that they were monitoring something else. Which is the more likely scenario. I think someone needs to google maps the locations in which is was floating and we can really determine what this particular balloon was doing. Or maybe it is just a communications or weather balloon. Anything is possible in my mind. Everything I have written is likely not the case but it does seem like that is a lot more to this puzzle then we are seeing. We are getting lost in the trees and not seeing the forest sadly because it is a constant barrage of bullshit. \nAnyway, I think that Russia, China, Trump and others who follow him are seeking to undermine our government and sow chaos for both Russia and China. There are just too many connections that make sense and I have touched on Two maybe connections. I just wonder what the government is not telling us and how far a long they really are in dealing with these things.",
">\n\nNow that Republicans know that Trump allowed three Chinese CCP balloons pass across the US during his tenure, they will now start railing on Biden for daring China and possible war by blowing up the CCP balloon.",
">\n\nIn fairness, three times during the Trump administration, China sent a balloon over the US, to no response. It might seem reasonable that we've decided to ignore stuff that's inconvenient to deal with.",
">\n\nI completely understand china’s stance here. They should be able to surveil other countries with out repercussion because the obvious unspoken law of “China can do whatever it wants” wasn’t taken into account. Obviously if another country attempted to do the same i’m they couldn’t because of the other unspoken law of. “You’re not china”",
">\n\nFor shooting a balloon? Man this story is getting weirder and weirder. I'd have thought they just let this one go - what the duck is happening here. \nNext thing I know we're going to find out there was an alien involved and there's a secret organization called Xcom",
">\n\nAnd China flying a spy balloon over the U.S. isn’t “violation of international practice”. Fuck off",
">\n\ni swear the only group with thinner skin that US conservatives are the CCP."
] |
>
Xi, go eat some honey and calm down, and for the love of God, put some pants on.
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?",
">\n\nAfter the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous",
">\n\nOh China, go fuck yourself.",
">\n\nSo exciting, going to war over a hot air balloon",
">\n\nI think China wanted the US to down it right away so they could paint America as hysterical and trigger happy and violent. When that didn’t happen, it looks like they didn’t have a plan B, so just nonsensically went with the original narrative leaving everyone to scratch their heads. It’s like when they got themselves kicked out of the Nobel ceremony and had their own, or when trumps team mistakenly held a press conference in a lawn store.",
">\n\nWe hurt winnie the poohs feelings :(",
">\n\nI see a lot of posts about trump letting three balloons float around. I do not want to seem like a conspiracy theorist but here it goes. Trump if he is a Russia shill for Putin is also a shill for china it doesn't take that much brain power to make that connection being that both Russia and china work together often times. The tariffs against china during the trump administration were an intentional economic slight against the American public to weaken our economic ability to address an attack on either Ukraine or Taiwan. \nSpecifically toward our farm exports and imports but also largely steel and aluminum. This is a deflection of course in order to take the spot light off of Russian aggression and to hamstring our ability to be in a strong economic position this also on the heels of the pandemic which was not an expected factor of course but obliterated the global supply chain causing extreme economic strife. You could argue that it was intentional but that is wacky and far right bullshit. Now that the tariffs are out of the way we can then look at. The next piece which is the war in Ukraine. Trump committed to false election claims that inspired right wing nut jobs to storm the capitol and if successful would have prevented our government from not only transitioning a new presidency but could have made our government ineffective to move on Russia invading Ukraine and potentially China invading Taiwan being that they could transition imports and exports to a newly revitalized war machine in Russia that successful stormed Ukraine taking 16 percent of the maize and 10 percent of the global wheat. Enough to cause a myriad of problems for the united states and force them into a more insular posture because of the domestic issues at home coupled with such a large loss of exported crops from Ukraine. \nThere is a ton more to this i imagine. but then we get to the balloon fiasco. Trump allowed Three such balloons to go across the united states without a word. Why is that? ignorance? intention? likely the latter. Being unsure as to what these balloons were collecting or depositing we can imagine they could have been doing anything of significance. Now if we want to do some crazy shit we could say the avian bird flu seems to have come about with some serious audacity. Is it the balloons? maybe which is why they opted to shoot it down in the water and not over land. This is just one possibility with the balloons. Another is that they were monitoring something else. Which is the more likely scenario. I think someone needs to google maps the locations in which is was floating and we can really determine what this particular balloon was doing. Or maybe it is just a communications or weather balloon. Anything is possible in my mind. Everything I have written is likely not the case but it does seem like that is a lot more to this puzzle then we are seeing. We are getting lost in the trees and not seeing the forest sadly because it is a constant barrage of bullshit. \nAnyway, I think that Russia, China, Trump and others who follow him are seeking to undermine our government and sow chaos for both Russia and China. There are just too many connections that make sense and I have touched on Two maybe connections. I just wonder what the government is not telling us and how far a long they really are in dealing with these things.",
">\n\nNow that Republicans know that Trump allowed three Chinese CCP balloons pass across the US during his tenure, they will now start railing on Biden for daring China and possible war by blowing up the CCP balloon.",
">\n\nIn fairness, three times during the Trump administration, China sent a balloon over the US, to no response. It might seem reasonable that we've decided to ignore stuff that's inconvenient to deal with.",
">\n\nI completely understand china’s stance here. They should be able to surveil other countries with out repercussion because the obvious unspoken law of “China can do whatever it wants” wasn’t taken into account. Obviously if another country attempted to do the same i’m they couldn’t because of the other unspoken law of. “You’re not china”",
">\n\nFor shooting a balloon? Man this story is getting weirder and weirder. I'd have thought they just let this one go - what the duck is happening here. \nNext thing I know we're going to find out there was an alien involved and there's a secret organization called Xcom",
">\n\nAnd China flying a spy balloon over the U.S. isn’t “violation of international practice”. Fuck off",
">\n\ni swear the only group with thinner skin that US conservatives are the CCP.",
">\n\nChina, do us all a favor and fuck off. Your country is a god damn disaster right now. \n*How much of a disaster are they?\nChina’s so fucked up that they make the us congress look like a highly functional institution."
] |
>
Let’s send a spy ballon into their territory and see what their response is.
We can call it a weather balloon as well.
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?",
">\n\nAfter the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous",
">\n\nOh China, go fuck yourself.",
">\n\nSo exciting, going to war over a hot air balloon",
">\n\nI think China wanted the US to down it right away so they could paint America as hysterical and trigger happy and violent. When that didn’t happen, it looks like they didn’t have a plan B, so just nonsensically went with the original narrative leaving everyone to scratch their heads. It’s like when they got themselves kicked out of the Nobel ceremony and had their own, or when trumps team mistakenly held a press conference in a lawn store.",
">\n\nWe hurt winnie the poohs feelings :(",
">\n\nI see a lot of posts about trump letting three balloons float around. I do not want to seem like a conspiracy theorist but here it goes. Trump if he is a Russia shill for Putin is also a shill for china it doesn't take that much brain power to make that connection being that both Russia and china work together often times. The tariffs against china during the trump administration were an intentional economic slight against the American public to weaken our economic ability to address an attack on either Ukraine or Taiwan. \nSpecifically toward our farm exports and imports but also largely steel and aluminum. This is a deflection of course in order to take the spot light off of Russian aggression and to hamstring our ability to be in a strong economic position this also on the heels of the pandemic which was not an expected factor of course but obliterated the global supply chain causing extreme economic strife. You could argue that it was intentional but that is wacky and far right bullshit. Now that the tariffs are out of the way we can then look at. The next piece which is the war in Ukraine. Trump committed to false election claims that inspired right wing nut jobs to storm the capitol and if successful would have prevented our government from not only transitioning a new presidency but could have made our government ineffective to move on Russia invading Ukraine and potentially China invading Taiwan being that they could transition imports and exports to a newly revitalized war machine in Russia that successful stormed Ukraine taking 16 percent of the maize and 10 percent of the global wheat. Enough to cause a myriad of problems for the united states and force them into a more insular posture because of the domestic issues at home coupled with such a large loss of exported crops from Ukraine. \nThere is a ton more to this i imagine. but then we get to the balloon fiasco. Trump allowed Three such balloons to go across the united states without a word. Why is that? ignorance? intention? likely the latter. Being unsure as to what these balloons were collecting or depositing we can imagine they could have been doing anything of significance. Now if we want to do some crazy shit we could say the avian bird flu seems to have come about with some serious audacity. Is it the balloons? maybe which is why they opted to shoot it down in the water and not over land. This is just one possibility with the balloons. Another is that they were monitoring something else. Which is the more likely scenario. I think someone needs to google maps the locations in which is was floating and we can really determine what this particular balloon was doing. Or maybe it is just a communications or weather balloon. Anything is possible in my mind. Everything I have written is likely not the case but it does seem like that is a lot more to this puzzle then we are seeing. We are getting lost in the trees and not seeing the forest sadly because it is a constant barrage of bullshit. \nAnyway, I think that Russia, China, Trump and others who follow him are seeking to undermine our government and sow chaos for both Russia and China. There are just too many connections that make sense and I have touched on Two maybe connections. I just wonder what the government is not telling us and how far a long they really are in dealing with these things.",
">\n\nNow that Republicans know that Trump allowed three Chinese CCP balloons pass across the US during his tenure, they will now start railing on Biden for daring China and possible war by blowing up the CCP balloon.",
">\n\nIn fairness, three times during the Trump administration, China sent a balloon over the US, to no response. It might seem reasonable that we've decided to ignore stuff that's inconvenient to deal with.",
">\n\nI completely understand china’s stance here. They should be able to surveil other countries with out repercussion because the obvious unspoken law of “China can do whatever it wants” wasn’t taken into account. Obviously if another country attempted to do the same i’m they couldn’t because of the other unspoken law of. “You’re not china”",
">\n\nFor shooting a balloon? Man this story is getting weirder and weirder. I'd have thought they just let this one go - what the duck is happening here. \nNext thing I know we're going to find out there was an alien involved and there's a secret organization called Xcom",
">\n\nAnd China flying a spy balloon over the U.S. isn’t “violation of international practice”. Fuck off",
">\n\ni swear the only group with thinner skin that US conservatives are the CCP.",
">\n\nChina, do us all a favor and fuck off. Your country is a god damn disaster right now. \n*How much of a disaster are they?\nChina’s so fucked up that they make the us congress look like a highly functional institution.",
">\n\nXi, go eat some honey and calm down, and for the love of God, put some pants on."
] |
>
Or a gender reveal party trick gone wrong
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?",
">\n\nAfter the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous",
">\n\nOh China, go fuck yourself.",
">\n\nSo exciting, going to war over a hot air balloon",
">\n\nI think China wanted the US to down it right away so they could paint America as hysterical and trigger happy and violent. When that didn’t happen, it looks like they didn’t have a plan B, so just nonsensically went with the original narrative leaving everyone to scratch their heads. It’s like when they got themselves kicked out of the Nobel ceremony and had their own, or when trumps team mistakenly held a press conference in a lawn store.",
">\n\nWe hurt winnie the poohs feelings :(",
">\n\nI see a lot of posts about trump letting three balloons float around. I do not want to seem like a conspiracy theorist but here it goes. Trump if he is a Russia shill for Putin is also a shill for china it doesn't take that much brain power to make that connection being that both Russia and china work together often times. The tariffs against china during the trump administration were an intentional economic slight against the American public to weaken our economic ability to address an attack on either Ukraine or Taiwan. \nSpecifically toward our farm exports and imports but also largely steel and aluminum. This is a deflection of course in order to take the spot light off of Russian aggression and to hamstring our ability to be in a strong economic position this also on the heels of the pandemic which was not an expected factor of course but obliterated the global supply chain causing extreme economic strife. You could argue that it was intentional but that is wacky and far right bullshit. Now that the tariffs are out of the way we can then look at. The next piece which is the war in Ukraine. Trump committed to false election claims that inspired right wing nut jobs to storm the capitol and if successful would have prevented our government from not only transitioning a new presidency but could have made our government ineffective to move on Russia invading Ukraine and potentially China invading Taiwan being that they could transition imports and exports to a newly revitalized war machine in Russia that successful stormed Ukraine taking 16 percent of the maize and 10 percent of the global wheat. Enough to cause a myriad of problems for the united states and force them into a more insular posture because of the domestic issues at home coupled with such a large loss of exported crops from Ukraine. \nThere is a ton more to this i imagine. but then we get to the balloon fiasco. Trump allowed Three such balloons to go across the united states without a word. Why is that? ignorance? intention? likely the latter. Being unsure as to what these balloons were collecting or depositing we can imagine they could have been doing anything of significance. Now if we want to do some crazy shit we could say the avian bird flu seems to have come about with some serious audacity. Is it the balloons? maybe which is why they opted to shoot it down in the water and not over land. This is just one possibility with the balloons. Another is that they were monitoring something else. Which is the more likely scenario. I think someone needs to google maps the locations in which is was floating and we can really determine what this particular balloon was doing. Or maybe it is just a communications or weather balloon. Anything is possible in my mind. Everything I have written is likely not the case but it does seem like that is a lot more to this puzzle then we are seeing. We are getting lost in the trees and not seeing the forest sadly because it is a constant barrage of bullshit. \nAnyway, I think that Russia, China, Trump and others who follow him are seeking to undermine our government and sow chaos for both Russia and China. There are just too many connections that make sense and I have touched on Two maybe connections. I just wonder what the government is not telling us and how far a long they really are in dealing with these things.",
">\n\nNow that Republicans know that Trump allowed three Chinese CCP balloons pass across the US during his tenure, they will now start railing on Biden for daring China and possible war by blowing up the CCP balloon.",
">\n\nIn fairness, three times during the Trump administration, China sent a balloon over the US, to no response. It might seem reasonable that we've decided to ignore stuff that's inconvenient to deal with.",
">\n\nI completely understand china’s stance here. They should be able to surveil other countries with out repercussion because the obvious unspoken law of “China can do whatever it wants” wasn’t taken into account. Obviously if another country attempted to do the same i’m they couldn’t because of the other unspoken law of. “You’re not china”",
">\n\nFor shooting a balloon? Man this story is getting weirder and weirder. I'd have thought they just let this one go - what the duck is happening here. \nNext thing I know we're going to find out there was an alien involved and there's a secret organization called Xcom",
">\n\nAnd China flying a spy balloon over the U.S. isn’t “violation of international practice”. Fuck off",
">\n\ni swear the only group with thinner skin that US conservatives are the CCP.",
">\n\nChina, do us all a favor and fuck off. Your country is a god damn disaster right now. \n*How much of a disaster are they?\nChina’s so fucked up that they make the us congress look like a highly functional institution.",
">\n\nXi, go eat some honey and calm down, and for the love of God, put some pants on.",
">\n\nLet’s send a spy ballon into their territory and see what their response is. \nWe can call it a weather balloon as well."
] |
>
Give me a break. You violated the United States sovereignty and borders.
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?",
">\n\nAfter the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous",
">\n\nOh China, go fuck yourself.",
">\n\nSo exciting, going to war over a hot air balloon",
">\n\nI think China wanted the US to down it right away so they could paint America as hysterical and trigger happy and violent. When that didn’t happen, it looks like they didn’t have a plan B, so just nonsensically went with the original narrative leaving everyone to scratch their heads. It’s like when they got themselves kicked out of the Nobel ceremony and had their own, or when trumps team mistakenly held a press conference in a lawn store.",
">\n\nWe hurt winnie the poohs feelings :(",
">\n\nI see a lot of posts about trump letting three balloons float around. I do not want to seem like a conspiracy theorist but here it goes. Trump if he is a Russia shill for Putin is also a shill for china it doesn't take that much brain power to make that connection being that both Russia and china work together often times. The tariffs against china during the trump administration were an intentional economic slight against the American public to weaken our economic ability to address an attack on either Ukraine or Taiwan. \nSpecifically toward our farm exports and imports but also largely steel and aluminum. This is a deflection of course in order to take the spot light off of Russian aggression and to hamstring our ability to be in a strong economic position this also on the heels of the pandemic which was not an expected factor of course but obliterated the global supply chain causing extreme economic strife. You could argue that it was intentional but that is wacky and far right bullshit. Now that the tariffs are out of the way we can then look at. The next piece which is the war in Ukraine. Trump committed to false election claims that inspired right wing nut jobs to storm the capitol and if successful would have prevented our government from not only transitioning a new presidency but could have made our government ineffective to move on Russia invading Ukraine and potentially China invading Taiwan being that they could transition imports and exports to a newly revitalized war machine in Russia that successful stormed Ukraine taking 16 percent of the maize and 10 percent of the global wheat. Enough to cause a myriad of problems for the united states and force them into a more insular posture because of the domestic issues at home coupled with such a large loss of exported crops from Ukraine. \nThere is a ton more to this i imagine. but then we get to the balloon fiasco. Trump allowed Three such balloons to go across the united states without a word. Why is that? ignorance? intention? likely the latter. Being unsure as to what these balloons were collecting or depositing we can imagine they could have been doing anything of significance. Now if we want to do some crazy shit we could say the avian bird flu seems to have come about with some serious audacity. Is it the balloons? maybe which is why they opted to shoot it down in the water and not over land. This is just one possibility with the balloons. Another is that they were monitoring something else. Which is the more likely scenario. I think someone needs to google maps the locations in which is was floating and we can really determine what this particular balloon was doing. Or maybe it is just a communications or weather balloon. Anything is possible in my mind. Everything I have written is likely not the case but it does seem like that is a lot more to this puzzle then we are seeing. We are getting lost in the trees and not seeing the forest sadly because it is a constant barrage of bullshit. \nAnyway, I think that Russia, China, Trump and others who follow him are seeking to undermine our government and sow chaos for both Russia and China. There are just too many connections that make sense and I have touched on Two maybe connections. I just wonder what the government is not telling us and how far a long they really are in dealing with these things.",
">\n\nNow that Republicans know that Trump allowed three Chinese CCP balloons pass across the US during his tenure, they will now start railing on Biden for daring China and possible war by blowing up the CCP balloon.",
">\n\nIn fairness, three times during the Trump administration, China sent a balloon over the US, to no response. It might seem reasonable that we've decided to ignore stuff that's inconvenient to deal with.",
">\n\nI completely understand china’s stance here. They should be able to surveil other countries with out repercussion because the obvious unspoken law of “China can do whatever it wants” wasn’t taken into account. Obviously if another country attempted to do the same i’m they couldn’t because of the other unspoken law of. “You’re not china”",
">\n\nFor shooting a balloon? Man this story is getting weirder and weirder. I'd have thought they just let this one go - what the duck is happening here. \nNext thing I know we're going to find out there was an alien involved and there's a secret organization called Xcom",
">\n\nAnd China flying a spy balloon over the U.S. isn’t “violation of international practice”. Fuck off",
">\n\ni swear the only group with thinner skin that US conservatives are the CCP.",
">\n\nChina, do us all a favor and fuck off. Your country is a god damn disaster right now. \n*How much of a disaster are they?\nChina’s so fucked up that they make the us congress look like a highly functional institution.",
">\n\nXi, go eat some honey and calm down, and for the love of God, put some pants on.",
">\n\nLet’s send a spy ballon into their territory and see what their response is. \nWe can call it a weather balloon as well.",
">\n\nOr a gender reveal party trick gone wrong"
] |
>
Their response feels trumpian. How dare you shoot down our illegal spy balloons conducting illegal surveillance. That has to be illegal and we will hold you accountable for it...
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?",
">\n\nAfter the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous",
">\n\nOh China, go fuck yourself.",
">\n\nSo exciting, going to war over a hot air balloon",
">\n\nI think China wanted the US to down it right away so they could paint America as hysterical and trigger happy and violent. When that didn’t happen, it looks like they didn’t have a plan B, so just nonsensically went with the original narrative leaving everyone to scratch their heads. It’s like when they got themselves kicked out of the Nobel ceremony and had their own, or when trumps team mistakenly held a press conference in a lawn store.",
">\n\nWe hurt winnie the poohs feelings :(",
">\n\nI see a lot of posts about trump letting three balloons float around. I do not want to seem like a conspiracy theorist but here it goes. Trump if he is a Russia shill for Putin is also a shill for china it doesn't take that much brain power to make that connection being that both Russia and china work together often times. The tariffs against china during the trump administration were an intentional economic slight against the American public to weaken our economic ability to address an attack on either Ukraine or Taiwan. \nSpecifically toward our farm exports and imports but also largely steel and aluminum. This is a deflection of course in order to take the spot light off of Russian aggression and to hamstring our ability to be in a strong economic position this also on the heels of the pandemic which was not an expected factor of course but obliterated the global supply chain causing extreme economic strife. You could argue that it was intentional but that is wacky and far right bullshit. Now that the tariffs are out of the way we can then look at. The next piece which is the war in Ukraine. Trump committed to false election claims that inspired right wing nut jobs to storm the capitol and if successful would have prevented our government from not only transitioning a new presidency but could have made our government ineffective to move on Russia invading Ukraine and potentially China invading Taiwan being that they could transition imports and exports to a newly revitalized war machine in Russia that successful stormed Ukraine taking 16 percent of the maize and 10 percent of the global wheat. Enough to cause a myriad of problems for the united states and force them into a more insular posture because of the domestic issues at home coupled with such a large loss of exported crops from Ukraine. \nThere is a ton more to this i imagine. but then we get to the balloon fiasco. Trump allowed Three such balloons to go across the united states without a word. Why is that? ignorance? intention? likely the latter. Being unsure as to what these balloons were collecting or depositing we can imagine they could have been doing anything of significance. Now if we want to do some crazy shit we could say the avian bird flu seems to have come about with some serious audacity. Is it the balloons? maybe which is why they opted to shoot it down in the water and not over land. This is just one possibility with the balloons. Another is that they were monitoring something else. Which is the more likely scenario. I think someone needs to google maps the locations in which is was floating and we can really determine what this particular balloon was doing. Or maybe it is just a communications or weather balloon. Anything is possible in my mind. Everything I have written is likely not the case but it does seem like that is a lot more to this puzzle then we are seeing. We are getting lost in the trees and not seeing the forest sadly because it is a constant barrage of bullshit. \nAnyway, I think that Russia, China, Trump and others who follow him are seeking to undermine our government and sow chaos for both Russia and China. There are just too many connections that make sense and I have touched on Two maybe connections. I just wonder what the government is not telling us and how far a long they really are in dealing with these things.",
">\n\nNow that Republicans know that Trump allowed three Chinese CCP balloons pass across the US during his tenure, they will now start railing on Biden for daring China and possible war by blowing up the CCP balloon.",
">\n\nIn fairness, three times during the Trump administration, China sent a balloon over the US, to no response. It might seem reasonable that we've decided to ignore stuff that's inconvenient to deal with.",
">\n\nI completely understand china’s stance here. They should be able to surveil other countries with out repercussion because the obvious unspoken law of “China can do whatever it wants” wasn’t taken into account. Obviously if another country attempted to do the same i’m they couldn’t because of the other unspoken law of. “You’re not china”",
">\n\nFor shooting a balloon? Man this story is getting weirder and weirder. I'd have thought they just let this one go - what the duck is happening here. \nNext thing I know we're going to find out there was an alien involved and there's a secret organization called Xcom",
">\n\nAnd China flying a spy balloon over the U.S. isn’t “violation of international practice”. Fuck off",
">\n\ni swear the only group with thinner skin that US conservatives are the CCP.",
">\n\nChina, do us all a favor and fuck off. Your country is a god damn disaster right now. \n*How much of a disaster are they?\nChina’s so fucked up that they make the us congress look like a highly functional institution.",
">\n\nXi, go eat some honey and calm down, and for the love of God, put some pants on.",
">\n\nLet’s send a spy ballon into their territory and see what their response is. \nWe can call it a weather balloon as well.",
">\n\nOr a gender reveal party trick gone wrong",
">\n\nGive me a break. You violated the United States sovereignty and borders."
] |
>
So they'd be fine with us sending surveillance balloons over China?
FFS China, you can't be serious here.
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?",
">\n\nAfter the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous",
">\n\nOh China, go fuck yourself.",
">\n\nSo exciting, going to war over a hot air balloon",
">\n\nI think China wanted the US to down it right away so they could paint America as hysterical and trigger happy and violent. When that didn’t happen, it looks like they didn’t have a plan B, so just nonsensically went with the original narrative leaving everyone to scratch their heads. It’s like when they got themselves kicked out of the Nobel ceremony and had their own, or when trumps team mistakenly held a press conference in a lawn store.",
">\n\nWe hurt winnie the poohs feelings :(",
">\n\nI see a lot of posts about trump letting three balloons float around. I do not want to seem like a conspiracy theorist but here it goes. Trump if he is a Russia shill for Putin is also a shill for china it doesn't take that much brain power to make that connection being that both Russia and china work together often times. The tariffs against china during the trump administration were an intentional economic slight against the American public to weaken our economic ability to address an attack on either Ukraine or Taiwan. \nSpecifically toward our farm exports and imports but also largely steel and aluminum. This is a deflection of course in order to take the spot light off of Russian aggression and to hamstring our ability to be in a strong economic position this also on the heels of the pandemic which was not an expected factor of course but obliterated the global supply chain causing extreme economic strife. You could argue that it was intentional but that is wacky and far right bullshit. Now that the tariffs are out of the way we can then look at. The next piece which is the war in Ukraine. Trump committed to false election claims that inspired right wing nut jobs to storm the capitol and if successful would have prevented our government from not only transitioning a new presidency but could have made our government ineffective to move on Russia invading Ukraine and potentially China invading Taiwan being that they could transition imports and exports to a newly revitalized war machine in Russia that successful stormed Ukraine taking 16 percent of the maize and 10 percent of the global wheat. Enough to cause a myriad of problems for the united states and force them into a more insular posture because of the domestic issues at home coupled with such a large loss of exported crops from Ukraine. \nThere is a ton more to this i imagine. but then we get to the balloon fiasco. Trump allowed Three such balloons to go across the united states without a word. Why is that? ignorance? intention? likely the latter. Being unsure as to what these balloons were collecting or depositing we can imagine they could have been doing anything of significance. Now if we want to do some crazy shit we could say the avian bird flu seems to have come about with some serious audacity. Is it the balloons? maybe which is why they opted to shoot it down in the water and not over land. This is just one possibility with the balloons. Another is that they were monitoring something else. Which is the more likely scenario. I think someone needs to google maps the locations in which is was floating and we can really determine what this particular balloon was doing. Or maybe it is just a communications or weather balloon. Anything is possible in my mind. Everything I have written is likely not the case but it does seem like that is a lot more to this puzzle then we are seeing. We are getting lost in the trees and not seeing the forest sadly because it is a constant barrage of bullshit. \nAnyway, I think that Russia, China, Trump and others who follow him are seeking to undermine our government and sow chaos for both Russia and China. There are just too many connections that make sense and I have touched on Two maybe connections. I just wonder what the government is not telling us and how far a long they really are in dealing with these things.",
">\n\nNow that Republicans know that Trump allowed three Chinese CCP balloons pass across the US during his tenure, they will now start railing on Biden for daring China and possible war by blowing up the CCP balloon.",
">\n\nIn fairness, three times during the Trump administration, China sent a balloon over the US, to no response. It might seem reasonable that we've decided to ignore stuff that's inconvenient to deal with.",
">\n\nI completely understand china’s stance here. They should be able to surveil other countries with out repercussion because the obvious unspoken law of “China can do whatever it wants” wasn’t taken into account. Obviously if another country attempted to do the same i’m they couldn’t because of the other unspoken law of. “You’re not china”",
">\n\nFor shooting a balloon? Man this story is getting weirder and weirder. I'd have thought they just let this one go - what the duck is happening here. \nNext thing I know we're going to find out there was an alien involved and there's a secret organization called Xcom",
">\n\nAnd China flying a spy balloon over the U.S. isn’t “violation of international practice”. Fuck off",
">\n\ni swear the only group with thinner skin that US conservatives are the CCP.",
">\n\nChina, do us all a favor and fuck off. Your country is a god damn disaster right now. \n*How much of a disaster are they?\nChina’s so fucked up that they make the us congress look like a highly functional institution.",
">\n\nXi, go eat some honey and calm down, and for the love of God, put some pants on.",
">\n\nLet’s send a spy ballon into their territory and see what their response is. \nWe can call it a weather balloon as well.",
">\n\nOr a gender reveal party trick gone wrong",
">\n\nGive me a break. You violated the United States sovereignty and borders.",
">\n\nTheir response feels trumpian. How dare you shoot down our illegal spy balloons conducting illegal surveillance. That has to be illegal and we will hold you accountable for it..."
] |
>
Fine China, next time one of our weather balloons enters your airspace, you get to shoot it down.
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?",
">\n\nAfter the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous",
">\n\nOh China, go fuck yourself.",
">\n\nSo exciting, going to war over a hot air balloon",
">\n\nI think China wanted the US to down it right away so they could paint America as hysterical and trigger happy and violent. When that didn’t happen, it looks like they didn’t have a plan B, so just nonsensically went with the original narrative leaving everyone to scratch their heads. It’s like when they got themselves kicked out of the Nobel ceremony and had their own, or when trumps team mistakenly held a press conference in a lawn store.",
">\n\nWe hurt winnie the poohs feelings :(",
">\n\nI see a lot of posts about trump letting three balloons float around. I do not want to seem like a conspiracy theorist but here it goes. Trump if he is a Russia shill for Putin is also a shill for china it doesn't take that much brain power to make that connection being that both Russia and china work together often times. The tariffs against china during the trump administration were an intentional economic slight against the American public to weaken our economic ability to address an attack on either Ukraine or Taiwan. \nSpecifically toward our farm exports and imports but also largely steel and aluminum. This is a deflection of course in order to take the spot light off of Russian aggression and to hamstring our ability to be in a strong economic position this also on the heels of the pandemic which was not an expected factor of course but obliterated the global supply chain causing extreme economic strife. You could argue that it was intentional but that is wacky and far right bullshit. Now that the tariffs are out of the way we can then look at. The next piece which is the war in Ukraine. Trump committed to false election claims that inspired right wing nut jobs to storm the capitol and if successful would have prevented our government from not only transitioning a new presidency but could have made our government ineffective to move on Russia invading Ukraine and potentially China invading Taiwan being that they could transition imports and exports to a newly revitalized war machine in Russia that successful stormed Ukraine taking 16 percent of the maize and 10 percent of the global wheat. Enough to cause a myriad of problems for the united states and force them into a more insular posture because of the domestic issues at home coupled with such a large loss of exported crops from Ukraine. \nThere is a ton more to this i imagine. but then we get to the balloon fiasco. Trump allowed Three such balloons to go across the united states without a word. Why is that? ignorance? intention? likely the latter. Being unsure as to what these balloons were collecting or depositing we can imagine they could have been doing anything of significance. Now if we want to do some crazy shit we could say the avian bird flu seems to have come about with some serious audacity. Is it the balloons? maybe which is why they opted to shoot it down in the water and not over land. This is just one possibility with the balloons. Another is that they were monitoring something else. Which is the more likely scenario. I think someone needs to google maps the locations in which is was floating and we can really determine what this particular balloon was doing. Or maybe it is just a communications or weather balloon. Anything is possible in my mind. Everything I have written is likely not the case but it does seem like that is a lot more to this puzzle then we are seeing. We are getting lost in the trees and not seeing the forest sadly because it is a constant barrage of bullshit. \nAnyway, I think that Russia, China, Trump and others who follow him are seeking to undermine our government and sow chaos for both Russia and China. There are just too many connections that make sense and I have touched on Two maybe connections. I just wonder what the government is not telling us and how far a long they really are in dealing with these things.",
">\n\nNow that Republicans know that Trump allowed three Chinese CCP balloons pass across the US during his tenure, they will now start railing on Biden for daring China and possible war by blowing up the CCP balloon.",
">\n\nIn fairness, three times during the Trump administration, China sent a balloon over the US, to no response. It might seem reasonable that we've decided to ignore stuff that's inconvenient to deal with.",
">\n\nI completely understand china’s stance here. They should be able to surveil other countries with out repercussion because the obvious unspoken law of “China can do whatever it wants” wasn’t taken into account. Obviously if another country attempted to do the same i’m they couldn’t because of the other unspoken law of. “You’re not china”",
">\n\nFor shooting a balloon? Man this story is getting weirder and weirder. I'd have thought they just let this one go - what the duck is happening here. \nNext thing I know we're going to find out there was an alien involved and there's a secret organization called Xcom",
">\n\nAnd China flying a spy balloon over the U.S. isn’t “violation of international practice”. Fuck off",
">\n\ni swear the only group with thinner skin that US conservatives are the CCP.",
">\n\nChina, do us all a favor and fuck off. Your country is a god damn disaster right now. \n*How much of a disaster are they?\nChina’s so fucked up that they make the us congress look like a highly functional institution.",
">\n\nXi, go eat some honey and calm down, and for the love of God, put some pants on.",
">\n\nLet’s send a spy ballon into their territory and see what their response is. \nWe can call it a weather balloon as well.",
">\n\nOr a gender reveal party trick gone wrong",
">\n\nGive me a break. You violated the United States sovereignty and borders.",
">\n\nTheir response feels trumpian. How dare you shoot down our illegal spy balloons conducting illegal surveillance. That has to be illegal and we will hold you accountable for it...",
">\n\nSo they'd be fine with us sending surveillance balloons over China? \nFFS China, you can't be serious here."
] |
>
Go home china you’re drunk
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?",
">\n\nAfter the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous",
">\n\nOh China, go fuck yourself.",
">\n\nSo exciting, going to war over a hot air balloon",
">\n\nI think China wanted the US to down it right away so they could paint America as hysterical and trigger happy and violent. When that didn’t happen, it looks like they didn’t have a plan B, so just nonsensically went with the original narrative leaving everyone to scratch their heads. It’s like when they got themselves kicked out of the Nobel ceremony and had their own, or when trumps team mistakenly held a press conference in a lawn store.",
">\n\nWe hurt winnie the poohs feelings :(",
">\n\nI see a lot of posts about trump letting three balloons float around. I do not want to seem like a conspiracy theorist but here it goes. Trump if he is a Russia shill for Putin is also a shill for china it doesn't take that much brain power to make that connection being that both Russia and china work together often times. The tariffs against china during the trump administration were an intentional economic slight against the American public to weaken our economic ability to address an attack on either Ukraine or Taiwan. \nSpecifically toward our farm exports and imports but also largely steel and aluminum. This is a deflection of course in order to take the spot light off of Russian aggression and to hamstring our ability to be in a strong economic position this also on the heels of the pandemic which was not an expected factor of course but obliterated the global supply chain causing extreme economic strife. You could argue that it was intentional but that is wacky and far right bullshit. Now that the tariffs are out of the way we can then look at. The next piece which is the war in Ukraine. Trump committed to false election claims that inspired right wing nut jobs to storm the capitol and if successful would have prevented our government from not only transitioning a new presidency but could have made our government ineffective to move on Russia invading Ukraine and potentially China invading Taiwan being that they could transition imports and exports to a newly revitalized war machine in Russia that successful stormed Ukraine taking 16 percent of the maize and 10 percent of the global wheat. Enough to cause a myriad of problems for the united states and force them into a more insular posture because of the domestic issues at home coupled with such a large loss of exported crops from Ukraine. \nThere is a ton more to this i imagine. but then we get to the balloon fiasco. Trump allowed Three such balloons to go across the united states without a word. Why is that? ignorance? intention? likely the latter. Being unsure as to what these balloons were collecting or depositing we can imagine they could have been doing anything of significance. Now if we want to do some crazy shit we could say the avian bird flu seems to have come about with some serious audacity. Is it the balloons? maybe which is why they opted to shoot it down in the water and not over land. This is just one possibility with the balloons. Another is that they were monitoring something else. Which is the more likely scenario. I think someone needs to google maps the locations in which is was floating and we can really determine what this particular balloon was doing. Or maybe it is just a communications or weather balloon. Anything is possible in my mind. Everything I have written is likely not the case but it does seem like that is a lot more to this puzzle then we are seeing. We are getting lost in the trees and not seeing the forest sadly because it is a constant barrage of bullshit. \nAnyway, I think that Russia, China, Trump and others who follow him are seeking to undermine our government and sow chaos for both Russia and China. There are just too many connections that make sense and I have touched on Two maybe connections. I just wonder what the government is not telling us and how far a long they really are in dealing with these things.",
">\n\nNow that Republicans know that Trump allowed three Chinese CCP balloons pass across the US during his tenure, they will now start railing on Biden for daring China and possible war by blowing up the CCP balloon.",
">\n\nIn fairness, three times during the Trump administration, China sent a balloon over the US, to no response. It might seem reasonable that we've decided to ignore stuff that's inconvenient to deal with.",
">\n\nI completely understand china’s stance here. They should be able to surveil other countries with out repercussion because the obvious unspoken law of “China can do whatever it wants” wasn’t taken into account. Obviously if another country attempted to do the same i’m they couldn’t because of the other unspoken law of. “You’re not china”",
">\n\nFor shooting a balloon? Man this story is getting weirder and weirder. I'd have thought they just let this one go - what the duck is happening here. \nNext thing I know we're going to find out there was an alien involved and there's a secret organization called Xcom",
">\n\nAnd China flying a spy balloon over the U.S. isn’t “violation of international practice”. Fuck off",
">\n\ni swear the only group with thinner skin that US conservatives are the CCP.",
">\n\nChina, do us all a favor and fuck off. Your country is a god damn disaster right now. \n*How much of a disaster are they?\nChina’s so fucked up that they make the us congress look like a highly functional institution.",
">\n\nXi, go eat some honey and calm down, and for the love of God, put some pants on.",
">\n\nLet’s send a spy ballon into their territory and see what their response is. \nWe can call it a weather balloon as well.",
">\n\nOr a gender reveal party trick gone wrong",
">\n\nGive me a break. You violated the United States sovereignty and borders.",
">\n\nTheir response feels trumpian. How dare you shoot down our illegal spy balloons conducting illegal surveillance. That has to be illegal and we will hold you accountable for it...",
">\n\nSo they'd be fine with us sending surveillance balloons over China? \nFFS China, you can't be serious here.",
">\n\nFine China, next time one of our weather balloons enters your airspace, you get to shoot it down."
] |
>
China thinks they have a right to our airspace? It’s a clear provocation.
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?",
">\n\nAfter the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous",
">\n\nOh China, go fuck yourself.",
">\n\nSo exciting, going to war over a hot air balloon",
">\n\nI think China wanted the US to down it right away so they could paint America as hysterical and trigger happy and violent. When that didn’t happen, it looks like they didn’t have a plan B, so just nonsensically went with the original narrative leaving everyone to scratch their heads. It’s like when they got themselves kicked out of the Nobel ceremony and had their own, or when trumps team mistakenly held a press conference in a lawn store.",
">\n\nWe hurt winnie the poohs feelings :(",
">\n\nI see a lot of posts about trump letting three balloons float around. I do not want to seem like a conspiracy theorist but here it goes. Trump if he is a Russia shill for Putin is also a shill for china it doesn't take that much brain power to make that connection being that both Russia and china work together often times. The tariffs against china during the trump administration were an intentional economic slight against the American public to weaken our economic ability to address an attack on either Ukraine or Taiwan. \nSpecifically toward our farm exports and imports but also largely steel and aluminum. This is a deflection of course in order to take the spot light off of Russian aggression and to hamstring our ability to be in a strong economic position this also on the heels of the pandemic which was not an expected factor of course but obliterated the global supply chain causing extreme economic strife. You could argue that it was intentional but that is wacky and far right bullshit. Now that the tariffs are out of the way we can then look at. The next piece which is the war in Ukraine. Trump committed to false election claims that inspired right wing nut jobs to storm the capitol and if successful would have prevented our government from not only transitioning a new presidency but could have made our government ineffective to move on Russia invading Ukraine and potentially China invading Taiwan being that they could transition imports and exports to a newly revitalized war machine in Russia that successful stormed Ukraine taking 16 percent of the maize and 10 percent of the global wheat. Enough to cause a myriad of problems for the united states and force them into a more insular posture because of the domestic issues at home coupled with such a large loss of exported crops from Ukraine. \nThere is a ton more to this i imagine. but then we get to the balloon fiasco. Trump allowed Three such balloons to go across the united states without a word. Why is that? ignorance? intention? likely the latter. Being unsure as to what these balloons were collecting or depositing we can imagine they could have been doing anything of significance. Now if we want to do some crazy shit we could say the avian bird flu seems to have come about with some serious audacity. Is it the balloons? maybe which is why they opted to shoot it down in the water and not over land. This is just one possibility with the balloons. Another is that they were monitoring something else. Which is the more likely scenario. I think someone needs to google maps the locations in which is was floating and we can really determine what this particular balloon was doing. Or maybe it is just a communications or weather balloon. Anything is possible in my mind. Everything I have written is likely not the case but it does seem like that is a lot more to this puzzle then we are seeing. We are getting lost in the trees and not seeing the forest sadly because it is a constant barrage of bullshit. \nAnyway, I think that Russia, China, Trump and others who follow him are seeking to undermine our government and sow chaos for both Russia and China. There are just too many connections that make sense and I have touched on Two maybe connections. I just wonder what the government is not telling us and how far a long they really are in dealing with these things.",
">\n\nNow that Republicans know that Trump allowed three Chinese CCP balloons pass across the US during his tenure, they will now start railing on Biden for daring China and possible war by blowing up the CCP balloon.",
">\n\nIn fairness, three times during the Trump administration, China sent a balloon over the US, to no response. It might seem reasonable that we've decided to ignore stuff that's inconvenient to deal with.",
">\n\nI completely understand china’s stance here. They should be able to surveil other countries with out repercussion because the obvious unspoken law of “China can do whatever it wants” wasn’t taken into account. Obviously if another country attempted to do the same i’m they couldn’t because of the other unspoken law of. “You’re not china”",
">\n\nFor shooting a balloon? Man this story is getting weirder and weirder. I'd have thought they just let this one go - what the duck is happening here. \nNext thing I know we're going to find out there was an alien involved and there's a secret organization called Xcom",
">\n\nAnd China flying a spy balloon over the U.S. isn’t “violation of international practice”. Fuck off",
">\n\ni swear the only group with thinner skin that US conservatives are the CCP.",
">\n\nChina, do us all a favor and fuck off. Your country is a god damn disaster right now. \n*How much of a disaster are they?\nChina’s so fucked up that they make the us congress look like a highly functional institution.",
">\n\nXi, go eat some honey and calm down, and for the love of God, put some pants on.",
">\n\nLet’s send a spy ballon into their territory and see what their response is. \nWe can call it a weather balloon as well.",
">\n\nOr a gender reveal party trick gone wrong",
">\n\nGive me a break. You violated the United States sovereignty and borders.",
">\n\nTheir response feels trumpian. How dare you shoot down our illegal spy balloons conducting illegal surveillance. That has to be illegal and we will hold you accountable for it...",
">\n\nSo they'd be fine with us sending surveillance balloons over China? \nFFS China, you can't be serious here.",
">\n\nFine China, next time one of our weather balloons enters your airspace, you get to shoot it down.",
">\n\nGo home china you’re drunk"
] |
>
Repercussions for shooting down what they claimed was a “weather balloon” that went off course? They must take their weather seriously in China.
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?",
">\n\nAfter the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous",
">\n\nOh China, go fuck yourself.",
">\n\nSo exciting, going to war over a hot air balloon",
">\n\nI think China wanted the US to down it right away so they could paint America as hysterical and trigger happy and violent. When that didn’t happen, it looks like they didn’t have a plan B, so just nonsensically went with the original narrative leaving everyone to scratch their heads. It’s like when they got themselves kicked out of the Nobel ceremony and had their own, or when trumps team mistakenly held a press conference in a lawn store.",
">\n\nWe hurt winnie the poohs feelings :(",
">\n\nI see a lot of posts about trump letting three balloons float around. I do not want to seem like a conspiracy theorist but here it goes. Trump if he is a Russia shill for Putin is also a shill for china it doesn't take that much brain power to make that connection being that both Russia and china work together often times. The tariffs against china during the trump administration were an intentional economic slight against the American public to weaken our economic ability to address an attack on either Ukraine or Taiwan. \nSpecifically toward our farm exports and imports but also largely steel and aluminum. This is a deflection of course in order to take the spot light off of Russian aggression and to hamstring our ability to be in a strong economic position this also on the heels of the pandemic which was not an expected factor of course but obliterated the global supply chain causing extreme economic strife. You could argue that it was intentional but that is wacky and far right bullshit. Now that the tariffs are out of the way we can then look at. The next piece which is the war in Ukraine. Trump committed to false election claims that inspired right wing nut jobs to storm the capitol and if successful would have prevented our government from not only transitioning a new presidency but could have made our government ineffective to move on Russia invading Ukraine and potentially China invading Taiwan being that they could transition imports and exports to a newly revitalized war machine in Russia that successful stormed Ukraine taking 16 percent of the maize and 10 percent of the global wheat. Enough to cause a myriad of problems for the united states and force them into a more insular posture because of the domestic issues at home coupled with such a large loss of exported crops from Ukraine. \nThere is a ton more to this i imagine. but then we get to the balloon fiasco. Trump allowed Three such balloons to go across the united states without a word. Why is that? ignorance? intention? likely the latter. Being unsure as to what these balloons were collecting or depositing we can imagine they could have been doing anything of significance. Now if we want to do some crazy shit we could say the avian bird flu seems to have come about with some serious audacity. Is it the balloons? maybe which is why they opted to shoot it down in the water and not over land. This is just one possibility with the balloons. Another is that they were monitoring something else. Which is the more likely scenario. I think someone needs to google maps the locations in which is was floating and we can really determine what this particular balloon was doing. Or maybe it is just a communications or weather balloon. Anything is possible in my mind. Everything I have written is likely not the case but it does seem like that is a lot more to this puzzle then we are seeing. We are getting lost in the trees and not seeing the forest sadly because it is a constant barrage of bullshit. \nAnyway, I think that Russia, China, Trump and others who follow him are seeking to undermine our government and sow chaos for both Russia and China. There are just too many connections that make sense and I have touched on Two maybe connections. I just wonder what the government is not telling us and how far a long they really are in dealing with these things.",
">\n\nNow that Republicans know that Trump allowed three Chinese CCP balloons pass across the US during his tenure, they will now start railing on Biden for daring China and possible war by blowing up the CCP balloon.",
">\n\nIn fairness, three times during the Trump administration, China sent a balloon over the US, to no response. It might seem reasonable that we've decided to ignore stuff that's inconvenient to deal with.",
">\n\nI completely understand china’s stance here. They should be able to surveil other countries with out repercussion because the obvious unspoken law of “China can do whatever it wants” wasn’t taken into account. Obviously if another country attempted to do the same i’m they couldn’t because of the other unspoken law of. “You’re not china”",
">\n\nFor shooting a balloon? Man this story is getting weirder and weirder. I'd have thought they just let this one go - what the duck is happening here. \nNext thing I know we're going to find out there was an alien involved and there's a secret organization called Xcom",
">\n\nAnd China flying a spy balloon over the U.S. isn’t “violation of international practice”. Fuck off",
">\n\ni swear the only group with thinner skin that US conservatives are the CCP.",
">\n\nChina, do us all a favor and fuck off. Your country is a god damn disaster right now. \n*How much of a disaster are they?\nChina’s so fucked up that they make the us congress look like a highly functional institution.",
">\n\nXi, go eat some honey and calm down, and for the love of God, put some pants on.",
">\n\nLet’s send a spy ballon into their territory and see what their response is. \nWe can call it a weather balloon as well.",
">\n\nOr a gender reveal party trick gone wrong",
">\n\nGive me a break. You violated the United States sovereignty and borders.",
">\n\nTheir response feels trumpian. How dare you shoot down our illegal spy balloons conducting illegal surveillance. That has to be illegal and we will hold you accountable for it...",
">\n\nSo they'd be fine with us sending surveillance balloons over China? \nFFS China, you can't be serious here.",
">\n\nFine China, next time one of our weather balloons enters your airspace, you get to shoot it down.",
">\n\nGo home china you’re drunk",
">\n\nChina thinks they have a right to our airspace? It’s a clear provocation."
] |
>
China should not intervene in other countries' internal affairs, as they themselves would say.,
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?",
">\n\nAfter the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous",
">\n\nOh China, go fuck yourself.",
">\n\nSo exciting, going to war over a hot air balloon",
">\n\nI think China wanted the US to down it right away so they could paint America as hysterical and trigger happy and violent. When that didn’t happen, it looks like they didn’t have a plan B, so just nonsensically went with the original narrative leaving everyone to scratch their heads. It’s like when they got themselves kicked out of the Nobel ceremony and had their own, or when trumps team mistakenly held a press conference in a lawn store.",
">\n\nWe hurt winnie the poohs feelings :(",
">\n\nI see a lot of posts about trump letting three balloons float around. I do not want to seem like a conspiracy theorist but here it goes. Trump if he is a Russia shill for Putin is also a shill for china it doesn't take that much brain power to make that connection being that both Russia and china work together often times. The tariffs against china during the trump administration were an intentional economic slight against the American public to weaken our economic ability to address an attack on either Ukraine or Taiwan. \nSpecifically toward our farm exports and imports but also largely steel and aluminum. This is a deflection of course in order to take the spot light off of Russian aggression and to hamstring our ability to be in a strong economic position this also on the heels of the pandemic which was not an expected factor of course but obliterated the global supply chain causing extreme economic strife. You could argue that it was intentional but that is wacky and far right bullshit. Now that the tariffs are out of the way we can then look at. The next piece which is the war in Ukraine. Trump committed to false election claims that inspired right wing nut jobs to storm the capitol and if successful would have prevented our government from not only transitioning a new presidency but could have made our government ineffective to move on Russia invading Ukraine and potentially China invading Taiwan being that they could transition imports and exports to a newly revitalized war machine in Russia that successful stormed Ukraine taking 16 percent of the maize and 10 percent of the global wheat. Enough to cause a myriad of problems for the united states and force them into a more insular posture because of the domestic issues at home coupled with such a large loss of exported crops from Ukraine. \nThere is a ton more to this i imagine. but then we get to the balloon fiasco. Trump allowed Three such balloons to go across the united states without a word. Why is that? ignorance? intention? likely the latter. Being unsure as to what these balloons were collecting or depositing we can imagine they could have been doing anything of significance. Now if we want to do some crazy shit we could say the avian bird flu seems to have come about with some serious audacity. Is it the balloons? maybe which is why they opted to shoot it down in the water and not over land. This is just one possibility with the balloons. Another is that they were monitoring something else. Which is the more likely scenario. I think someone needs to google maps the locations in which is was floating and we can really determine what this particular balloon was doing. Or maybe it is just a communications or weather balloon. Anything is possible in my mind. Everything I have written is likely not the case but it does seem like that is a lot more to this puzzle then we are seeing. We are getting lost in the trees and not seeing the forest sadly because it is a constant barrage of bullshit. \nAnyway, I think that Russia, China, Trump and others who follow him are seeking to undermine our government and sow chaos for both Russia and China. There are just too many connections that make sense and I have touched on Two maybe connections. I just wonder what the government is not telling us and how far a long they really are in dealing with these things.",
">\n\nNow that Republicans know that Trump allowed three Chinese CCP balloons pass across the US during his tenure, they will now start railing on Biden for daring China and possible war by blowing up the CCP balloon.",
">\n\nIn fairness, three times during the Trump administration, China sent a balloon over the US, to no response. It might seem reasonable that we've decided to ignore stuff that's inconvenient to deal with.",
">\n\nI completely understand china’s stance here. They should be able to surveil other countries with out repercussion because the obvious unspoken law of “China can do whatever it wants” wasn’t taken into account. Obviously if another country attempted to do the same i’m they couldn’t because of the other unspoken law of. “You’re not china”",
">\n\nFor shooting a balloon? Man this story is getting weirder and weirder. I'd have thought they just let this one go - what the duck is happening here. \nNext thing I know we're going to find out there was an alien involved and there's a secret organization called Xcom",
">\n\nAnd China flying a spy balloon over the U.S. isn’t “violation of international practice”. Fuck off",
">\n\ni swear the only group with thinner skin that US conservatives are the CCP.",
">\n\nChina, do us all a favor and fuck off. Your country is a god damn disaster right now. \n*How much of a disaster are they?\nChina’s so fucked up that they make the us congress look like a highly functional institution.",
">\n\nXi, go eat some honey and calm down, and for the love of God, put some pants on.",
">\n\nLet’s send a spy ballon into their territory and see what their response is. \nWe can call it a weather balloon as well.",
">\n\nOr a gender reveal party trick gone wrong",
">\n\nGive me a break. You violated the United States sovereignty and borders.",
">\n\nTheir response feels trumpian. How dare you shoot down our illegal spy balloons conducting illegal surveillance. That has to be illegal and we will hold you accountable for it...",
">\n\nSo they'd be fine with us sending surveillance balloons over China? \nFFS China, you can't be serious here.",
">\n\nFine China, next time one of our weather balloons enters your airspace, you get to shoot it down.",
">\n\nGo home china you’re drunk",
">\n\nChina thinks they have a right to our airspace? It’s a clear provocation.",
">\n\nRepercussions for shooting down what they claimed was a “weather balloon” that went off course? They must take their weather seriously in China."
] |
>
Big whoop wanna fight about it China ?
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?",
">\n\nAfter the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous",
">\n\nOh China, go fuck yourself.",
">\n\nSo exciting, going to war over a hot air balloon",
">\n\nI think China wanted the US to down it right away so they could paint America as hysterical and trigger happy and violent. When that didn’t happen, it looks like they didn’t have a plan B, so just nonsensically went with the original narrative leaving everyone to scratch their heads. It’s like when they got themselves kicked out of the Nobel ceremony and had their own, or when trumps team mistakenly held a press conference in a lawn store.",
">\n\nWe hurt winnie the poohs feelings :(",
">\n\nI see a lot of posts about trump letting three balloons float around. I do not want to seem like a conspiracy theorist but here it goes. Trump if he is a Russia shill for Putin is also a shill for china it doesn't take that much brain power to make that connection being that both Russia and china work together often times. The tariffs against china during the trump administration were an intentional economic slight against the American public to weaken our economic ability to address an attack on either Ukraine or Taiwan. \nSpecifically toward our farm exports and imports but also largely steel and aluminum. This is a deflection of course in order to take the spot light off of Russian aggression and to hamstring our ability to be in a strong economic position this also on the heels of the pandemic which was not an expected factor of course but obliterated the global supply chain causing extreme economic strife. You could argue that it was intentional but that is wacky and far right bullshit. Now that the tariffs are out of the way we can then look at. The next piece which is the war in Ukraine. Trump committed to false election claims that inspired right wing nut jobs to storm the capitol and if successful would have prevented our government from not only transitioning a new presidency but could have made our government ineffective to move on Russia invading Ukraine and potentially China invading Taiwan being that they could transition imports and exports to a newly revitalized war machine in Russia that successful stormed Ukraine taking 16 percent of the maize and 10 percent of the global wheat. Enough to cause a myriad of problems for the united states and force them into a more insular posture because of the domestic issues at home coupled with such a large loss of exported crops from Ukraine. \nThere is a ton more to this i imagine. but then we get to the balloon fiasco. Trump allowed Three such balloons to go across the united states without a word. Why is that? ignorance? intention? likely the latter. Being unsure as to what these balloons were collecting or depositing we can imagine they could have been doing anything of significance. Now if we want to do some crazy shit we could say the avian bird flu seems to have come about with some serious audacity. Is it the balloons? maybe which is why they opted to shoot it down in the water and not over land. This is just one possibility with the balloons. Another is that they were monitoring something else. Which is the more likely scenario. I think someone needs to google maps the locations in which is was floating and we can really determine what this particular balloon was doing. Or maybe it is just a communications or weather balloon. Anything is possible in my mind. Everything I have written is likely not the case but it does seem like that is a lot more to this puzzle then we are seeing. We are getting lost in the trees and not seeing the forest sadly because it is a constant barrage of bullshit. \nAnyway, I think that Russia, China, Trump and others who follow him are seeking to undermine our government and sow chaos for both Russia and China. There are just too many connections that make sense and I have touched on Two maybe connections. I just wonder what the government is not telling us and how far a long they really are in dealing with these things.",
">\n\nNow that Republicans know that Trump allowed three Chinese CCP balloons pass across the US during his tenure, they will now start railing on Biden for daring China and possible war by blowing up the CCP balloon.",
">\n\nIn fairness, three times during the Trump administration, China sent a balloon over the US, to no response. It might seem reasonable that we've decided to ignore stuff that's inconvenient to deal with.",
">\n\nI completely understand china’s stance here. They should be able to surveil other countries with out repercussion because the obvious unspoken law of “China can do whatever it wants” wasn’t taken into account. Obviously if another country attempted to do the same i’m they couldn’t because of the other unspoken law of. “You’re not china”",
">\n\nFor shooting a balloon? Man this story is getting weirder and weirder. I'd have thought they just let this one go - what the duck is happening here. \nNext thing I know we're going to find out there was an alien involved and there's a secret organization called Xcom",
">\n\nAnd China flying a spy balloon over the U.S. isn’t “violation of international practice”. Fuck off",
">\n\ni swear the only group with thinner skin that US conservatives are the CCP.",
">\n\nChina, do us all a favor and fuck off. Your country is a god damn disaster right now. \n*How much of a disaster are they?\nChina’s so fucked up that they make the us congress look like a highly functional institution.",
">\n\nXi, go eat some honey and calm down, and for the love of God, put some pants on.",
">\n\nLet’s send a spy ballon into their territory and see what their response is. \nWe can call it a weather balloon as well.",
">\n\nOr a gender reveal party trick gone wrong",
">\n\nGive me a break. You violated the United States sovereignty and borders.",
">\n\nTheir response feels trumpian. How dare you shoot down our illegal spy balloons conducting illegal surveillance. That has to be illegal and we will hold you accountable for it...",
">\n\nSo they'd be fine with us sending surveillance balloons over China? \nFFS China, you can't be serious here.",
">\n\nFine China, next time one of our weather balloons enters your airspace, you get to shoot it down.",
">\n\nGo home china you’re drunk",
">\n\nChina thinks they have a right to our airspace? It’s a clear provocation.",
">\n\nRepercussions for shooting down what they claimed was a “weather balloon” that went off course? They must take their weather seriously in China.",
">\n\nChina should not intervene in other countries' internal affairs, as they themselves would say.,"
] |
>
Oh cool so Xi woulda been cool with us sending a balloon over Beijing right?
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?",
">\n\nAfter the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous",
">\n\nOh China, go fuck yourself.",
">\n\nSo exciting, going to war over a hot air balloon",
">\n\nI think China wanted the US to down it right away so they could paint America as hysterical and trigger happy and violent. When that didn’t happen, it looks like they didn’t have a plan B, so just nonsensically went with the original narrative leaving everyone to scratch their heads. It’s like when they got themselves kicked out of the Nobel ceremony and had their own, or when trumps team mistakenly held a press conference in a lawn store.",
">\n\nWe hurt winnie the poohs feelings :(",
">\n\nI see a lot of posts about trump letting three balloons float around. I do not want to seem like a conspiracy theorist but here it goes. Trump if he is a Russia shill for Putin is also a shill for china it doesn't take that much brain power to make that connection being that both Russia and china work together often times. The tariffs against china during the trump administration were an intentional economic slight against the American public to weaken our economic ability to address an attack on either Ukraine or Taiwan. \nSpecifically toward our farm exports and imports but also largely steel and aluminum. This is a deflection of course in order to take the spot light off of Russian aggression and to hamstring our ability to be in a strong economic position this also on the heels of the pandemic which was not an expected factor of course but obliterated the global supply chain causing extreme economic strife. You could argue that it was intentional but that is wacky and far right bullshit. Now that the tariffs are out of the way we can then look at. The next piece which is the war in Ukraine. Trump committed to false election claims that inspired right wing nut jobs to storm the capitol and if successful would have prevented our government from not only transitioning a new presidency but could have made our government ineffective to move on Russia invading Ukraine and potentially China invading Taiwan being that they could transition imports and exports to a newly revitalized war machine in Russia that successful stormed Ukraine taking 16 percent of the maize and 10 percent of the global wheat. Enough to cause a myriad of problems for the united states and force them into a more insular posture because of the domestic issues at home coupled with such a large loss of exported crops from Ukraine. \nThere is a ton more to this i imagine. but then we get to the balloon fiasco. Trump allowed Three such balloons to go across the united states without a word. Why is that? ignorance? intention? likely the latter. Being unsure as to what these balloons were collecting or depositing we can imagine they could have been doing anything of significance. Now if we want to do some crazy shit we could say the avian bird flu seems to have come about with some serious audacity. Is it the balloons? maybe which is why they opted to shoot it down in the water and not over land. This is just one possibility with the balloons. Another is that they were monitoring something else. Which is the more likely scenario. I think someone needs to google maps the locations in which is was floating and we can really determine what this particular balloon was doing. Or maybe it is just a communications or weather balloon. Anything is possible in my mind. Everything I have written is likely not the case but it does seem like that is a lot more to this puzzle then we are seeing. We are getting lost in the trees and not seeing the forest sadly because it is a constant barrage of bullshit. \nAnyway, I think that Russia, China, Trump and others who follow him are seeking to undermine our government and sow chaos for both Russia and China. There are just too many connections that make sense and I have touched on Two maybe connections. I just wonder what the government is not telling us and how far a long they really are in dealing with these things.",
">\n\nNow that Republicans know that Trump allowed three Chinese CCP balloons pass across the US during his tenure, they will now start railing on Biden for daring China and possible war by blowing up the CCP balloon.",
">\n\nIn fairness, three times during the Trump administration, China sent a balloon over the US, to no response. It might seem reasonable that we've decided to ignore stuff that's inconvenient to deal with.",
">\n\nI completely understand china’s stance here. They should be able to surveil other countries with out repercussion because the obvious unspoken law of “China can do whatever it wants” wasn’t taken into account. Obviously if another country attempted to do the same i’m they couldn’t because of the other unspoken law of. “You’re not china”",
">\n\nFor shooting a balloon? Man this story is getting weirder and weirder. I'd have thought they just let this one go - what the duck is happening here. \nNext thing I know we're going to find out there was an alien involved and there's a secret organization called Xcom",
">\n\nAnd China flying a spy balloon over the U.S. isn’t “violation of international practice”. Fuck off",
">\n\ni swear the only group with thinner skin that US conservatives are the CCP.",
">\n\nChina, do us all a favor and fuck off. Your country is a god damn disaster right now. \n*How much of a disaster are they?\nChina’s so fucked up that they make the us congress look like a highly functional institution.",
">\n\nXi, go eat some honey and calm down, and for the love of God, put some pants on.",
">\n\nLet’s send a spy ballon into their territory and see what their response is. \nWe can call it a weather balloon as well.",
">\n\nOr a gender reveal party trick gone wrong",
">\n\nGive me a break. You violated the United States sovereignty and borders.",
">\n\nTheir response feels trumpian. How dare you shoot down our illegal spy balloons conducting illegal surveillance. That has to be illegal and we will hold you accountable for it...",
">\n\nSo they'd be fine with us sending surveillance balloons over China? \nFFS China, you can't be serious here.",
">\n\nFine China, next time one of our weather balloons enters your airspace, you get to shoot it down.",
">\n\nGo home china you’re drunk",
">\n\nChina thinks they have a right to our airspace? It’s a clear provocation.",
">\n\nRepercussions for shooting down what they claimed was a “weather balloon” that went off course? They must take their weather seriously in China.",
">\n\nChina should not intervene in other countries' internal affairs, as they themselves would say.,",
">\n\nBig whoop wanna fight about it China ?"
] |
>
It’s funny that China says it was a private companies balloon. When there are no “private “ companies in China. They are all beholden to the CCP
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?",
">\n\nAfter the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous",
">\n\nOh China, go fuck yourself.",
">\n\nSo exciting, going to war over a hot air balloon",
">\n\nI think China wanted the US to down it right away so they could paint America as hysterical and trigger happy and violent. When that didn’t happen, it looks like they didn’t have a plan B, so just nonsensically went with the original narrative leaving everyone to scratch their heads. It’s like when they got themselves kicked out of the Nobel ceremony and had their own, or when trumps team mistakenly held a press conference in a lawn store.",
">\n\nWe hurt winnie the poohs feelings :(",
">\n\nI see a lot of posts about trump letting three balloons float around. I do not want to seem like a conspiracy theorist but here it goes. Trump if he is a Russia shill for Putin is also a shill for china it doesn't take that much brain power to make that connection being that both Russia and china work together often times. The tariffs against china during the trump administration were an intentional economic slight against the American public to weaken our economic ability to address an attack on either Ukraine or Taiwan. \nSpecifically toward our farm exports and imports but also largely steel and aluminum. This is a deflection of course in order to take the spot light off of Russian aggression and to hamstring our ability to be in a strong economic position this also on the heels of the pandemic which was not an expected factor of course but obliterated the global supply chain causing extreme economic strife. You could argue that it was intentional but that is wacky and far right bullshit. Now that the tariffs are out of the way we can then look at. The next piece which is the war in Ukraine. Trump committed to false election claims that inspired right wing nut jobs to storm the capitol and if successful would have prevented our government from not only transitioning a new presidency but could have made our government ineffective to move on Russia invading Ukraine and potentially China invading Taiwan being that they could transition imports and exports to a newly revitalized war machine in Russia that successful stormed Ukraine taking 16 percent of the maize and 10 percent of the global wheat. Enough to cause a myriad of problems for the united states and force them into a more insular posture because of the domestic issues at home coupled with such a large loss of exported crops from Ukraine. \nThere is a ton more to this i imagine. but then we get to the balloon fiasco. Trump allowed Three such balloons to go across the united states without a word. Why is that? ignorance? intention? likely the latter. Being unsure as to what these balloons were collecting or depositing we can imagine they could have been doing anything of significance. Now if we want to do some crazy shit we could say the avian bird flu seems to have come about with some serious audacity. Is it the balloons? maybe which is why they opted to shoot it down in the water and not over land. This is just one possibility with the balloons. Another is that they were monitoring something else. Which is the more likely scenario. I think someone needs to google maps the locations in which is was floating and we can really determine what this particular balloon was doing. Or maybe it is just a communications or weather balloon. Anything is possible in my mind. Everything I have written is likely not the case but it does seem like that is a lot more to this puzzle then we are seeing. We are getting lost in the trees and not seeing the forest sadly because it is a constant barrage of bullshit. \nAnyway, I think that Russia, China, Trump and others who follow him are seeking to undermine our government and sow chaos for both Russia and China. There are just too many connections that make sense and I have touched on Two maybe connections. I just wonder what the government is not telling us and how far a long they really are in dealing with these things.",
">\n\nNow that Republicans know that Trump allowed three Chinese CCP balloons pass across the US during his tenure, they will now start railing on Biden for daring China and possible war by blowing up the CCP balloon.",
">\n\nIn fairness, three times during the Trump administration, China sent a balloon over the US, to no response. It might seem reasonable that we've decided to ignore stuff that's inconvenient to deal with.",
">\n\nI completely understand china’s stance here. They should be able to surveil other countries with out repercussion because the obvious unspoken law of “China can do whatever it wants” wasn’t taken into account. Obviously if another country attempted to do the same i’m they couldn’t because of the other unspoken law of. “You’re not china”",
">\n\nFor shooting a balloon? Man this story is getting weirder and weirder. I'd have thought they just let this one go - what the duck is happening here. \nNext thing I know we're going to find out there was an alien involved and there's a secret organization called Xcom",
">\n\nAnd China flying a spy balloon over the U.S. isn’t “violation of international practice”. Fuck off",
">\n\ni swear the only group with thinner skin that US conservatives are the CCP.",
">\n\nChina, do us all a favor and fuck off. Your country is a god damn disaster right now. \n*How much of a disaster are they?\nChina’s so fucked up that they make the us congress look like a highly functional institution.",
">\n\nXi, go eat some honey and calm down, and for the love of God, put some pants on.",
">\n\nLet’s send a spy ballon into their territory and see what their response is. \nWe can call it a weather balloon as well.",
">\n\nOr a gender reveal party trick gone wrong",
">\n\nGive me a break. You violated the United States sovereignty and borders.",
">\n\nTheir response feels trumpian. How dare you shoot down our illegal spy balloons conducting illegal surveillance. That has to be illegal and we will hold you accountable for it...",
">\n\nSo they'd be fine with us sending surveillance balloons over China? \nFFS China, you can't be serious here.",
">\n\nFine China, next time one of our weather balloons enters your airspace, you get to shoot it down.",
">\n\nGo home china you’re drunk",
">\n\nChina thinks they have a right to our airspace? It’s a clear provocation.",
">\n\nRepercussions for shooting down what they claimed was a “weather balloon” that went off course? They must take their weather seriously in China.",
">\n\nChina should not intervene in other countries' internal affairs, as they themselves would say.,",
">\n\nBig whoop wanna fight about it China ?",
">\n\nOh cool so Xi woulda been cool with us sending a balloon over Beijing right?"
] |
>
Whina gonna whine
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?",
">\n\nAfter the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous",
">\n\nOh China, go fuck yourself.",
">\n\nSo exciting, going to war over a hot air balloon",
">\n\nI think China wanted the US to down it right away so they could paint America as hysterical and trigger happy and violent. When that didn’t happen, it looks like they didn’t have a plan B, so just nonsensically went with the original narrative leaving everyone to scratch their heads. It’s like when they got themselves kicked out of the Nobel ceremony and had their own, or when trumps team mistakenly held a press conference in a lawn store.",
">\n\nWe hurt winnie the poohs feelings :(",
">\n\nI see a lot of posts about trump letting three balloons float around. I do not want to seem like a conspiracy theorist but here it goes. Trump if he is a Russia shill for Putin is also a shill for china it doesn't take that much brain power to make that connection being that both Russia and china work together often times. The tariffs against china during the trump administration were an intentional economic slight against the American public to weaken our economic ability to address an attack on either Ukraine or Taiwan. \nSpecifically toward our farm exports and imports but also largely steel and aluminum. This is a deflection of course in order to take the spot light off of Russian aggression and to hamstring our ability to be in a strong economic position this also on the heels of the pandemic which was not an expected factor of course but obliterated the global supply chain causing extreme economic strife. You could argue that it was intentional but that is wacky and far right bullshit. Now that the tariffs are out of the way we can then look at. The next piece which is the war in Ukraine. Trump committed to false election claims that inspired right wing nut jobs to storm the capitol and if successful would have prevented our government from not only transitioning a new presidency but could have made our government ineffective to move on Russia invading Ukraine and potentially China invading Taiwan being that they could transition imports and exports to a newly revitalized war machine in Russia that successful stormed Ukraine taking 16 percent of the maize and 10 percent of the global wheat. Enough to cause a myriad of problems for the united states and force them into a more insular posture because of the domestic issues at home coupled with such a large loss of exported crops from Ukraine. \nThere is a ton more to this i imagine. but then we get to the balloon fiasco. Trump allowed Three such balloons to go across the united states without a word. Why is that? ignorance? intention? likely the latter. Being unsure as to what these balloons were collecting or depositing we can imagine they could have been doing anything of significance. Now if we want to do some crazy shit we could say the avian bird flu seems to have come about with some serious audacity. Is it the balloons? maybe which is why they opted to shoot it down in the water and not over land. This is just one possibility with the balloons. Another is that they were monitoring something else. Which is the more likely scenario. I think someone needs to google maps the locations in which is was floating and we can really determine what this particular balloon was doing. Or maybe it is just a communications or weather balloon. Anything is possible in my mind. Everything I have written is likely not the case but it does seem like that is a lot more to this puzzle then we are seeing. We are getting lost in the trees and not seeing the forest sadly because it is a constant barrage of bullshit. \nAnyway, I think that Russia, China, Trump and others who follow him are seeking to undermine our government and sow chaos for both Russia and China. There are just too many connections that make sense and I have touched on Two maybe connections. I just wonder what the government is not telling us and how far a long they really are in dealing with these things.",
">\n\nNow that Republicans know that Trump allowed three Chinese CCP balloons pass across the US during his tenure, they will now start railing on Biden for daring China and possible war by blowing up the CCP balloon.",
">\n\nIn fairness, three times during the Trump administration, China sent a balloon over the US, to no response. It might seem reasonable that we've decided to ignore stuff that's inconvenient to deal with.",
">\n\nI completely understand china’s stance here. They should be able to surveil other countries with out repercussion because the obvious unspoken law of “China can do whatever it wants” wasn’t taken into account. Obviously if another country attempted to do the same i’m they couldn’t because of the other unspoken law of. “You’re not china”",
">\n\nFor shooting a balloon? Man this story is getting weirder and weirder. I'd have thought they just let this one go - what the duck is happening here. \nNext thing I know we're going to find out there was an alien involved and there's a secret organization called Xcom",
">\n\nAnd China flying a spy balloon over the U.S. isn’t “violation of international practice”. Fuck off",
">\n\ni swear the only group with thinner skin that US conservatives are the CCP.",
">\n\nChina, do us all a favor and fuck off. Your country is a god damn disaster right now. \n*How much of a disaster are they?\nChina’s so fucked up that they make the us congress look like a highly functional institution.",
">\n\nXi, go eat some honey and calm down, and for the love of God, put some pants on.",
">\n\nLet’s send a spy ballon into their territory and see what their response is. \nWe can call it a weather balloon as well.",
">\n\nOr a gender reveal party trick gone wrong",
">\n\nGive me a break. You violated the United States sovereignty and borders.",
">\n\nTheir response feels trumpian. How dare you shoot down our illegal spy balloons conducting illegal surveillance. That has to be illegal and we will hold you accountable for it...",
">\n\nSo they'd be fine with us sending surveillance balloons over China? \nFFS China, you can't be serious here.",
">\n\nFine China, next time one of our weather balloons enters your airspace, you get to shoot it down.",
">\n\nGo home china you’re drunk",
">\n\nChina thinks they have a right to our airspace? It’s a clear provocation.",
">\n\nRepercussions for shooting down what they claimed was a “weather balloon” that went off course? They must take their weather seriously in China.",
">\n\nChina should not intervene in other countries' internal affairs, as they themselves would say.,",
">\n\nBig whoop wanna fight about it China ?",
">\n\nOh cool so Xi woulda been cool with us sending a balloon over Beijing right?",
">\n\nIt’s funny that China says it was a private companies balloon. When there are no “private “ companies in China. They are all beholden to the CCP"
] |
>
china needs a firm dose of reality
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?",
">\n\nAfter the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous",
">\n\nOh China, go fuck yourself.",
">\n\nSo exciting, going to war over a hot air balloon",
">\n\nI think China wanted the US to down it right away so they could paint America as hysterical and trigger happy and violent. When that didn’t happen, it looks like they didn’t have a plan B, so just nonsensically went with the original narrative leaving everyone to scratch their heads. It’s like when they got themselves kicked out of the Nobel ceremony and had their own, or when trumps team mistakenly held a press conference in a lawn store.",
">\n\nWe hurt winnie the poohs feelings :(",
">\n\nI see a lot of posts about trump letting three balloons float around. I do not want to seem like a conspiracy theorist but here it goes. Trump if he is a Russia shill for Putin is also a shill for china it doesn't take that much brain power to make that connection being that both Russia and china work together often times. The tariffs against china during the trump administration were an intentional economic slight against the American public to weaken our economic ability to address an attack on either Ukraine or Taiwan. \nSpecifically toward our farm exports and imports but also largely steel and aluminum. This is a deflection of course in order to take the spot light off of Russian aggression and to hamstring our ability to be in a strong economic position this also on the heels of the pandemic which was not an expected factor of course but obliterated the global supply chain causing extreme economic strife. You could argue that it was intentional but that is wacky and far right bullshit. Now that the tariffs are out of the way we can then look at. The next piece which is the war in Ukraine. Trump committed to false election claims that inspired right wing nut jobs to storm the capitol and if successful would have prevented our government from not only transitioning a new presidency but could have made our government ineffective to move on Russia invading Ukraine and potentially China invading Taiwan being that they could transition imports and exports to a newly revitalized war machine in Russia that successful stormed Ukraine taking 16 percent of the maize and 10 percent of the global wheat. Enough to cause a myriad of problems for the united states and force them into a more insular posture because of the domestic issues at home coupled with such a large loss of exported crops from Ukraine. \nThere is a ton more to this i imagine. but then we get to the balloon fiasco. Trump allowed Three such balloons to go across the united states without a word. Why is that? ignorance? intention? likely the latter. Being unsure as to what these balloons were collecting or depositing we can imagine they could have been doing anything of significance. Now if we want to do some crazy shit we could say the avian bird flu seems to have come about with some serious audacity. Is it the balloons? maybe which is why they opted to shoot it down in the water and not over land. This is just one possibility with the balloons. Another is that they were monitoring something else. Which is the more likely scenario. I think someone needs to google maps the locations in which is was floating and we can really determine what this particular balloon was doing. Or maybe it is just a communications or weather balloon. Anything is possible in my mind. Everything I have written is likely not the case but it does seem like that is a lot more to this puzzle then we are seeing. We are getting lost in the trees and not seeing the forest sadly because it is a constant barrage of bullshit. \nAnyway, I think that Russia, China, Trump and others who follow him are seeking to undermine our government and sow chaos for both Russia and China. There are just too many connections that make sense and I have touched on Two maybe connections. I just wonder what the government is not telling us and how far a long they really are in dealing with these things.",
">\n\nNow that Republicans know that Trump allowed three Chinese CCP balloons pass across the US during his tenure, they will now start railing on Biden for daring China and possible war by blowing up the CCP balloon.",
">\n\nIn fairness, three times during the Trump administration, China sent a balloon over the US, to no response. It might seem reasonable that we've decided to ignore stuff that's inconvenient to deal with.",
">\n\nI completely understand china’s stance here. They should be able to surveil other countries with out repercussion because the obvious unspoken law of “China can do whatever it wants” wasn’t taken into account. Obviously if another country attempted to do the same i’m they couldn’t because of the other unspoken law of. “You’re not china”",
">\n\nFor shooting a balloon? Man this story is getting weirder and weirder. I'd have thought they just let this one go - what the duck is happening here. \nNext thing I know we're going to find out there was an alien involved and there's a secret organization called Xcom",
">\n\nAnd China flying a spy balloon over the U.S. isn’t “violation of international practice”. Fuck off",
">\n\ni swear the only group with thinner skin that US conservatives are the CCP.",
">\n\nChina, do us all a favor and fuck off. Your country is a god damn disaster right now. \n*How much of a disaster are they?\nChina’s so fucked up that they make the us congress look like a highly functional institution.",
">\n\nXi, go eat some honey and calm down, and for the love of God, put some pants on.",
">\n\nLet’s send a spy ballon into their territory and see what their response is. \nWe can call it a weather balloon as well.",
">\n\nOr a gender reveal party trick gone wrong",
">\n\nGive me a break. You violated the United States sovereignty and borders.",
">\n\nTheir response feels trumpian. How dare you shoot down our illegal spy balloons conducting illegal surveillance. That has to be illegal and we will hold you accountable for it...",
">\n\nSo they'd be fine with us sending surveillance balloons over China? \nFFS China, you can't be serious here.",
">\n\nFine China, next time one of our weather balloons enters your airspace, you get to shoot it down.",
">\n\nGo home china you’re drunk",
">\n\nChina thinks they have a right to our airspace? It’s a clear provocation.",
">\n\nRepercussions for shooting down what they claimed was a “weather balloon” that went off course? They must take their weather seriously in China.",
">\n\nChina should not intervene in other countries' internal affairs, as they themselves would say.,",
">\n\nBig whoop wanna fight about it China ?",
">\n\nOh cool so Xi woulda been cool with us sending a balloon over Beijing right?",
">\n\nIt’s funny that China says it was a private companies balloon. When there are no “private “ companies in China. They are all beholden to the CCP",
">\n\nWhina gonna whine"
] |
>
The US probably waited till the American people saw it. To make news and become public aware. The fact that china is saying shooting it down was wrong of the US, makes me want to slap them.. being in our air space uninvited is way worse.
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?",
">\n\nAfter the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous",
">\n\nOh China, go fuck yourself.",
">\n\nSo exciting, going to war over a hot air balloon",
">\n\nI think China wanted the US to down it right away so they could paint America as hysterical and trigger happy and violent. When that didn’t happen, it looks like they didn’t have a plan B, so just nonsensically went with the original narrative leaving everyone to scratch their heads. It’s like when they got themselves kicked out of the Nobel ceremony and had their own, or when trumps team mistakenly held a press conference in a lawn store.",
">\n\nWe hurt winnie the poohs feelings :(",
">\n\nI see a lot of posts about trump letting three balloons float around. I do not want to seem like a conspiracy theorist but here it goes. Trump if he is a Russia shill for Putin is also a shill for china it doesn't take that much brain power to make that connection being that both Russia and china work together often times. The tariffs against china during the trump administration were an intentional economic slight against the American public to weaken our economic ability to address an attack on either Ukraine or Taiwan. \nSpecifically toward our farm exports and imports but also largely steel and aluminum. This is a deflection of course in order to take the spot light off of Russian aggression and to hamstring our ability to be in a strong economic position this also on the heels of the pandemic which was not an expected factor of course but obliterated the global supply chain causing extreme economic strife. You could argue that it was intentional but that is wacky and far right bullshit. Now that the tariffs are out of the way we can then look at. The next piece which is the war in Ukraine. Trump committed to false election claims that inspired right wing nut jobs to storm the capitol and if successful would have prevented our government from not only transitioning a new presidency but could have made our government ineffective to move on Russia invading Ukraine and potentially China invading Taiwan being that they could transition imports and exports to a newly revitalized war machine in Russia that successful stormed Ukraine taking 16 percent of the maize and 10 percent of the global wheat. Enough to cause a myriad of problems for the united states and force them into a more insular posture because of the domestic issues at home coupled with such a large loss of exported crops from Ukraine. \nThere is a ton more to this i imagine. but then we get to the balloon fiasco. Trump allowed Three such balloons to go across the united states without a word. Why is that? ignorance? intention? likely the latter. Being unsure as to what these balloons were collecting or depositing we can imagine they could have been doing anything of significance. Now if we want to do some crazy shit we could say the avian bird flu seems to have come about with some serious audacity. Is it the balloons? maybe which is why they opted to shoot it down in the water and not over land. This is just one possibility with the balloons. Another is that they were monitoring something else. Which is the more likely scenario. I think someone needs to google maps the locations in which is was floating and we can really determine what this particular balloon was doing. Or maybe it is just a communications or weather balloon. Anything is possible in my mind. Everything I have written is likely not the case but it does seem like that is a lot more to this puzzle then we are seeing. We are getting lost in the trees and not seeing the forest sadly because it is a constant barrage of bullshit. \nAnyway, I think that Russia, China, Trump and others who follow him are seeking to undermine our government and sow chaos for both Russia and China. There are just too many connections that make sense and I have touched on Two maybe connections. I just wonder what the government is not telling us and how far a long they really are in dealing with these things.",
">\n\nNow that Republicans know that Trump allowed three Chinese CCP balloons pass across the US during his tenure, they will now start railing on Biden for daring China and possible war by blowing up the CCP balloon.",
">\n\nIn fairness, three times during the Trump administration, China sent a balloon over the US, to no response. It might seem reasonable that we've decided to ignore stuff that's inconvenient to deal with.",
">\n\nI completely understand china’s stance here. They should be able to surveil other countries with out repercussion because the obvious unspoken law of “China can do whatever it wants” wasn’t taken into account. Obviously if another country attempted to do the same i’m they couldn’t because of the other unspoken law of. “You’re not china”",
">\n\nFor shooting a balloon? Man this story is getting weirder and weirder. I'd have thought they just let this one go - what the duck is happening here. \nNext thing I know we're going to find out there was an alien involved and there's a secret organization called Xcom",
">\n\nAnd China flying a spy balloon over the U.S. isn’t “violation of international practice”. Fuck off",
">\n\ni swear the only group with thinner skin that US conservatives are the CCP.",
">\n\nChina, do us all a favor and fuck off. Your country is a god damn disaster right now. \n*How much of a disaster are they?\nChina’s so fucked up that they make the us congress look like a highly functional institution.",
">\n\nXi, go eat some honey and calm down, and for the love of God, put some pants on.",
">\n\nLet’s send a spy ballon into their territory and see what their response is. \nWe can call it a weather balloon as well.",
">\n\nOr a gender reveal party trick gone wrong",
">\n\nGive me a break. You violated the United States sovereignty and borders.",
">\n\nTheir response feels trumpian. How dare you shoot down our illegal spy balloons conducting illegal surveillance. That has to be illegal and we will hold you accountable for it...",
">\n\nSo they'd be fine with us sending surveillance balloons over China? \nFFS China, you can't be serious here.",
">\n\nFine China, next time one of our weather balloons enters your airspace, you get to shoot it down.",
">\n\nGo home china you’re drunk",
">\n\nChina thinks they have a right to our airspace? It’s a clear provocation.",
">\n\nRepercussions for shooting down what they claimed was a “weather balloon” that went off course? They must take their weather seriously in China.",
">\n\nChina should not intervene in other countries' internal affairs, as they themselves would say.,",
">\n\nBig whoop wanna fight about it China ?",
">\n\nOh cool so Xi woulda been cool with us sending a balloon over Beijing right?",
">\n\nIt’s funny that China says it was a private companies balloon. When there are no “private “ companies in China. They are all beholden to the CCP",
">\n\nWhina gonna whine",
">\n\nchina needs a firm dose of reality"
] |
>
Yawn……..
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?",
">\n\nAfter the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous",
">\n\nOh China, go fuck yourself.",
">\n\nSo exciting, going to war over a hot air balloon",
">\n\nI think China wanted the US to down it right away so they could paint America as hysterical and trigger happy and violent. When that didn’t happen, it looks like they didn’t have a plan B, so just nonsensically went with the original narrative leaving everyone to scratch their heads. It’s like when they got themselves kicked out of the Nobel ceremony and had their own, or when trumps team mistakenly held a press conference in a lawn store.",
">\n\nWe hurt winnie the poohs feelings :(",
">\n\nI see a lot of posts about trump letting three balloons float around. I do not want to seem like a conspiracy theorist but here it goes. Trump if he is a Russia shill for Putin is also a shill for china it doesn't take that much brain power to make that connection being that both Russia and china work together often times. The tariffs against china during the trump administration were an intentional economic slight against the American public to weaken our economic ability to address an attack on either Ukraine or Taiwan. \nSpecifically toward our farm exports and imports but also largely steel and aluminum. This is a deflection of course in order to take the spot light off of Russian aggression and to hamstring our ability to be in a strong economic position this also on the heels of the pandemic which was not an expected factor of course but obliterated the global supply chain causing extreme economic strife. You could argue that it was intentional but that is wacky and far right bullshit. Now that the tariffs are out of the way we can then look at. The next piece which is the war in Ukraine. Trump committed to false election claims that inspired right wing nut jobs to storm the capitol and if successful would have prevented our government from not only transitioning a new presidency but could have made our government ineffective to move on Russia invading Ukraine and potentially China invading Taiwan being that they could transition imports and exports to a newly revitalized war machine in Russia that successful stormed Ukraine taking 16 percent of the maize and 10 percent of the global wheat. Enough to cause a myriad of problems for the united states and force them into a more insular posture because of the domestic issues at home coupled with such a large loss of exported crops from Ukraine. \nThere is a ton more to this i imagine. but then we get to the balloon fiasco. Trump allowed Three such balloons to go across the united states without a word. Why is that? ignorance? intention? likely the latter. Being unsure as to what these balloons were collecting or depositing we can imagine they could have been doing anything of significance. Now if we want to do some crazy shit we could say the avian bird flu seems to have come about with some serious audacity. Is it the balloons? maybe which is why they opted to shoot it down in the water and not over land. This is just one possibility with the balloons. Another is that they were monitoring something else. Which is the more likely scenario. I think someone needs to google maps the locations in which is was floating and we can really determine what this particular balloon was doing. Or maybe it is just a communications or weather balloon. Anything is possible in my mind. Everything I have written is likely not the case but it does seem like that is a lot more to this puzzle then we are seeing. We are getting lost in the trees and not seeing the forest sadly because it is a constant barrage of bullshit. \nAnyway, I think that Russia, China, Trump and others who follow him are seeking to undermine our government and sow chaos for both Russia and China. There are just too many connections that make sense and I have touched on Two maybe connections. I just wonder what the government is not telling us and how far a long they really are in dealing with these things.",
">\n\nNow that Republicans know that Trump allowed three Chinese CCP balloons pass across the US during his tenure, they will now start railing on Biden for daring China and possible war by blowing up the CCP balloon.",
">\n\nIn fairness, three times during the Trump administration, China sent a balloon over the US, to no response. It might seem reasonable that we've decided to ignore stuff that's inconvenient to deal with.",
">\n\nI completely understand china’s stance here. They should be able to surveil other countries with out repercussion because the obvious unspoken law of “China can do whatever it wants” wasn’t taken into account. Obviously if another country attempted to do the same i’m they couldn’t because of the other unspoken law of. “You’re not china”",
">\n\nFor shooting a balloon? Man this story is getting weirder and weirder. I'd have thought they just let this one go - what the duck is happening here. \nNext thing I know we're going to find out there was an alien involved and there's a secret organization called Xcom",
">\n\nAnd China flying a spy balloon over the U.S. isn’t “violation of international practice”. Fuck off",
">\n\ni swear the only group with thinner skin that US conservatives are the CCP.",
">\n\nChina, do us all a favor and fuck off. Your country is a god damn disaster right now. \n*How much of a disaster are they?\nChina’s so fucked up that they make the us congress look like a highly functional institution.",
">\n\nXi, go eat some honey and calm down, and for the love of God, put some pants on.",
">\n\nLet’s send a spy ballon into their territory and see what their response is. \nWe can call it a weather balloon as well.",
">\n\nOr a gender reveal party trick gone wrong",
">\n\nGive me a break. You violated the United States sovereignty and borders.",
">\n\nTheir response feels trumpian. How dare you shoot down our illegal spy balloons conducting illegal surveillance. That has to be illegal and we will hold you accountable for it...",
">\n\nSo they'd be fine with us sending surveillance balloons over China? \nFFS China, you can't be serious here.",
">\n\nFine China, next time one of our weather balloons enters your airspace, you get to shoot it down.",
">\n\nGo home china you’re drunk",
">\n\nChina thinks they have a right to our airspace? It’s a clear provocation.",
">\n\nRepercussions for shooting down what they claimed was a “weather balloon” that went off course? They must take their weather seriously in China.",
">\n\nChina should not intervene in other countries' internal affairs, as they themselves would say.,",
">\n\nBig whoop wanna fight about it China ?",
">\n\nOh cool so Xi woulda been cool with us sending a balloon over Beijing right?",
">\n\nIt’s funny that China says it was a private companies balloon. When there are no “private “ companies in China. They are all beholden to the CCP",
">\n\nWhina gonna whine",
">\n\nchina needs a firm dose of reality",
">\n\nThe US probably waited till the American people saw it. To make news and become public aware. The fact that china is saying shooting it down was wrong of the US, makes me want to slap them.. being in our air space uninvited is way worse."
] |
>
but we’ve been told by maga that Biden only did this because China signed off. So which is it
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?",
">\n\nAfter the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous",
">\n\nOh China, go fuck yourself.",
">\n\nSo exciting, going to war over a hot air balloon",
">\n\nI think China wanted the US to down it right away so they could paint America as hysterical and trigger happy and violent. When that didn’t happen, it looks like they didn’t have a plan B, so just nonsensically went with the original narrative leaving everyone to scratch their heads. It’s like when they got themselves kicked out of the Nobel ceremony and had their own, or when trumps team mistakenly held a press conference in a lawn store.",
">\n\nWe hurt winnie the poohs feelings :(",
">\n\nI see a lot of posts about trump letting three balloons float around. I do not want to seem like a conspiracy theorist but here it goes. Trump if he is a Russia shill for Putin is also a shill for china it doesn't take that much brain power to make that connection being that both Russia and china work together often times. The tariffs against china during the trump administration were an intentional economic slight against the American public to weaken our economic ability to address an attack on either Ukraine or Taiwan. \nSpecifically toward our farm exports and imports but also largely steel and aluminum. This is a deflection of course in order to take the spot light off of Russian aggression and to hamstring our ability to be in a strong economic position this also on the heels of the pandemic which was not an expected factor of course but obliterated the global supply chain causing extreme economic strife. You could argue that it was intentional but that is wacky and far right bullshit. Now that the tariffs are out of the way we can then look at. The next piece which is the war in Ukraine. Trump committed to false election claims that inspired right wing nut jobs to storm the capitol and if successful would have prevented our government from not only transitioning a new presidency but could have made our government ineffective to move on Russia invading Ukraine and potentially China invading Taiwan being that they could transition imports and exports to a newly revitalized war machine in Russia that successful stormed Ukraine taking 16 percent of the maize and 10 percent of the global wheat. Enough to cause a myriad of problems for the united states and force them into a more insular posture because of the domestic issues at home coupled with such a large loss of exported crops from Ukraine. \nThere is a ton more to this i imagine. but then we get to the balloon fiasco. Trump allowed Three such balloons to go across the united states without a word. Why is that? ignorance? intention? likely the latter. Being unsure as to what these balloons were collecting or depositing we can imagine they could have been doing anything of significance. Now if we want to do some crazy shit we could say the avian bird flu seems to have come about with some serious audacity. Is it the balloons? maybe which is why they opted to shoot it down in the water and not over land. This is just one possibility with the balloons. Another is that they were monitoring something else. Which is the more likely scenario. I think someone needs to google maps the locations in which is was floating and we can really determine what this particular balloon was doing. Or maybe it is just a communications or weather balloon. Anything is possible in my mind. Everything I have written is likely not the case but it does seem like that is a lot more to this puzzle then we are seeing. We are getting lost in the trees and not seeing the forest sadly because it is a constant barrage of bullshit. \nAnyway, I think that Russia, China, Trump and others who follow him are seeking to undermine our government and sow chaos for both Russia and China. There are just too many connections that make sense and I have touched on Two maybe connections. I just wonder what the government is not telling us and how far a long they really are in dealing with these things.",
">\n\nNow that Republicans know that Trump allowed three Chinese CCP balloons pass across the US during his tenure, they will now start railing on Biden for daring China and possible war by blowing up the CCP balloon.",
">\n\nIn fairness, three times during the Trump administration, China sent a balloon over the US, to no response. It might seem reasonable that we've decided to ignore stuff that's inconvenient to deal with.",
">\n\nI completely understand china’s stance here. They should be able to surveil other countries with out repercussion because the obvious unspoken law of “China can do whatever it wants” wasn’t taken into account. Obviously if another country attempted to do the same i’m they couldn’t because of the other unspoken law of. “You’re not china”",
">\n\nFor shooting a balloon? Man this story is getting weirder and weirder. I'd have thought they just let this one go - what the duck is happening here. \nNext thing I know we're going to find out there was an alien involved and there's a secret organization called Xcom",
">\n\nAnd China flying a spy balloon over the U.S. isn’t “violation of international practice”. Fuck off",
">\n\ni swear the only group with thinner skin that US conservatives are the CCP.",
">\n\nChina, do us all a favor and fuck off. Your country is a god damn disaster right now. \n*How much of a disaster are they?\nChina’s so fucked up that they make the us congress look like a highly functional institution.",
">\n\nXi, go eat some honey and calm down, and for the love of God, put some pants on.",
">\n\nLet’s send a spy ballon into their territory and see what their response is. \nWe can call it a weather balloon as well.",
">\n\nOr a gender reveal party trick gone wrong",
">\n\nGive me a break. You violated the United States sovereignty and borders.",
">\n\nTheir response feels trumpian. How dare you shoot down our illegal spy balloons conducting illegal surveillance. That has to be illegal and we will hold you accountable for it...",
">\n\nSo they'd be fine with us sending surveillance balloons over China? \nFFS China, you can't be serious here.",
">\n\nFine China, next time one of our weather balloons enters your airspace, you get to shoot it down.",
">\n\nGo home china you’re drunk",
">\n\nChina thinks they have a right to our airspace? It’s a clear provocation.",
">\n\nRepercussions for shooting down what they claimed was a “weather balloon” that went off course? They must take their weather seriously in China.",
">\n\nChina should not intervene in other countries' internal affairs, as they themselves would say.,",
">\n\nBig whoop wanna fight about it China ?",
">\n\nOh cool so Xi woulda been cool with us sending a balloon over Beijing right?",
">\n\nIt’s funny that China says it was a private companies balloon. When there are no “private “ companies in China. They are all beholden to the CCP",
">\n\nWhina gonna whine",
">\n\nchina needs a firm dose of reality",
">\n\nThe US probably waited till the American people saw it. To make news and become public aware. The fact that china is saying shooting it down was wrong of the US, makes me want to slap them.. being in our air space uninvited is way worse.",
">\n\nYawn…….."
] |
>
I'm curios if the Chinese were asked to land the balloon before it was shot down. They had plenty of time, if a plane entered a County's airspace without permission it would be ordered to land before it was shot down.
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?",
">\n\nAfter the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous",
">\n\nOh China, go fuck yourself.",
">\n\nSo exciting, going to war over a hot air balloon",
">\n\nI think China wanted the US to down it right away so they could paint America as hysterical and trigger happy and violent. When that didn’t happen, it looks like they didn’t have a plan B, so just nonsensically went with the original narrative leaving everyone to scratch their heads. It’s like when they got themselves kicked out of the Nobel ceremony and had their own, or when trumps team mistakenly held a press conference in a lawn store.",
">\n\nWe hurt winnie the poohs feelings :(",
">\n\nI see a lot of posts about trump letting three balloons float around. I do not want to seem like a conspiracy theorist but here it goes. Trump if he is a Russia shill for Putin is also a shill for china it doesn't take that much brain power to make that connection being that both Russia and china work together often times. The tariffs against china during the trump administration were an intentional economic slight against the American public to weaken our economic ability to address an attack on either Ukraine or Taiwan. \nSpecifically toward our farm exports and imports but also largely steel and aluminum. This is a deflection of course in order to take the spot light off of Russian aggression and to hamstring our ability to be in a strong economic position this also on the heels of the pandemic which was not an expected factor of course but obliterated the global supply chain causing extreme economic strife. You could argue that it was intentional but that is wacky and far right bullshit. Now that the tariffs are out of the way we can then look at. The next piece which is the war in Ukraine. Trump committed to false election claims that inspired right wing nut jobs to storm the capitol and if successful would have prevented our government from not only transitioning a new presidency but could have made our government ineffective to move on Russia invading Ukraine and potentially China invading Taiwan being that they could transition imports and exports to a newly revitalized war machine in Russia that successful stormed Ukraine taking 16 percent of the maize and 10 percent of the global wheat. Enough to cause a myriad of problems for the united states and force them into a more insular posture because of the domestic issues at home coupled with such a large loss of exported crops from Ukraine. \nThere is a ton more to this i imagine. but then we get to the balloon fiasco. Trump allowed Three such balloons to go across the united states without a word. Why is that? ignorance? intention? likely the latter. Being unsure as to what these balloons were collecting or depositing we can imagine they could have been doing anything of significance. Now if we want to do some crazy shit we could say the avian bird flu seems to have come about with some serious audacity. Is it the balloons? maybe which is why they opted to shoot it down in the water and not over land. This is just one possibility with the balloons. Another is that they were monitoring something else. Which is the more likely scenario. I think someone needs to google maps the locations in which is was floating and we can really determine what this particular balloon was doing. Or maybe it is just a communications or weather balloon. Anything is possible in my mind. Everything I have written is likely not the case but it does seem like that is a lot more to this puzzle then we are seeing. We are getting lost in the trees and not seeing the forest sadly because it is a constant barrage of bullshit. \nAnyway, I think that Russia, China, Trump and others who follow him are seeking to undermine our government and sow chaos for both Russia and China. There are just too many connections that make sense and I have touched on Two maybe connections. I just wonder what the government is not telling us and how far a long they really are in dealing with these things.",
">\n\nNow that Republicans know that Trump allowed three Chinese CCP balloons pass across the US during his tenure, they will now start railing on Biden for daring China and possible war by blowing up the CCP balloon.",
">\n\nIn fairness, three times during the Trump administration, China sent a balloon over the US, to no response. It might seem reasonable that we've decided to ignore stuff that's inconvenient to deal with.",
">\n\nI completely understand china’s stance here. They should be able to surveil other countries with out repercussion because the obvious unspoken law of “China can do whatever it wants” wasn’t taken into account. Obviously if another country attempted to do the same i’m they couldn’t because of the other unspoken law of. “You’re not china”",
">\n\nFor shooting a balloon? Man this story is getting weirder and weirder. I'd have thought they just let this one go - what the duck is happening here. \nNext thing I know we're going to find out there was an alien involved and there's a secret organization called Xcom",
">\n\nAnd China flying a spy balloon over the U.S. isn’t “violation of international practice”. Fuck off",
">\n\ni swear the only group with thinner skin that US conservatives are the CCP.",
">\n\nChina, do us all a favor and fuck off. Your country is a god damn disaster right now. \n*How much of a disaster are they?\nChina’s so fucked up that they make the us congress look like a highly functional institution.",
">\n\nXi, go eat some honey and calm down, and for the love of God, put some pants on.",
">\n\nLet’s send a spy ballon into their territory and see what their response is. \nWe can call it a weather balloon as well.",
">\n\nOr a gender reveal party trick gone wrong",
">\n\nGive me a break. You violated the United States sovereignty and borders.",
">\n\nTheir response feels trumpian. How dare you shoot down our illegal spy balloons conducting illegal surveillance. That has to be illegal and we will hold you accountable for it...",
">\n\nSo they'd be fine with us sending surveillance balloons over China? \nFFS China, you can't be serious here.",
">\n\nFine China, next time one of our weather balloons enters your airspace, you get to shoot it down.",
">\n\nGo home china you’re drunk",
">\n\nChina thinks they have a right to our airspace? It’s a clear provocation.",
">\n\nRepercussions for shooting down what they claimed was a “weather balloon” that went off course? They must take their weather seriously in China.",
">\n\nChina should not intervene in other countries' internal affairs, as they themselves would say.,",
">\n\nBig whoop wanna fight about it China ?",
">\n\nOh cool so Xi woulda been cool with us sending a balloon over Beijing right?",
">\n\nIt’s funny that China says it was a private companies balloon. When there are no “private “ companies in China. They are all beholden to the CCP",
">\n\nWhina gonna whine",
">\n\nchina needs a firm dose of reality",
">\n\nThe US probably waited till the American people saw it. To make news and become public aware. The fact that china is saying shooting it down was wrong of the US, makes me want to slap them.. being in our air space uninvited is way worse.",
">\n\nYawn……..",
">\n\nbut we’ve been told by maga that Biden only did this because China signed off. So which is it"
] |
>
They are gonna send an even bigger balloon this time!
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?",
">\n\nAfter the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous",
">\n\nOh China, go fuck yourself.",
">\n\nSo exciting, going to war over a hot air balloon",
">\n\nI think China wanted the US to down it right away so they could paint America as hysterical and trigger happy and violent. When that didn’t happen, it looks like they didn’t have a plan B, so just nonsensically went with the original narrative leaving everyone to scratch their heads. It’s like when they got themselves kicked out of the Nobel ceremony and had their own, or when trumps team mistakenly held a press conference in a lawn store.",
">\n\nWe hurt winnie the poohs feelings :(",
">\n\nI see a lot of posts about trump letting three balloons float around. I do not want to seem like a conspiracy theorist but here it goes. Trump if he is a Russia shill for Putin is also a shill for china it doesn't take that much brain power to make that connection being that both Russia and china work together often times. The tariffs against china during the trump administration were an intentional economic slight against the American public to weaken our economic ability to address an attack on either Ukraine or Taiwan. \nSpecifically toward our farm exports and imports but also largely steel and aluminum. This is a deflection of course in order to take the spot light off of Russian aggression and to hamstring our ability to be in a strong economic position this also on the heels of the pandemic which was not an expected factor of course but obliterated the global supply chain causing extreme economic strife. You could argue that it was intentional but that is wacky and far right bullshit. Now that the tariffs are out of the way we can then look at. The next piece which is the war in Ukraine. Trump committed to false election claims that inspired right wing nut jobs to storm the capitol and if successful would have prevented our government from not only transitioning a new presidency but could have made our government ineffective to move on Russia invading Ukraine and potentially China invading Taiwan being that they could transition imports and exports to a newly revitalized war machine in Russia that successful stormed Ukraine taking 16 percent of the maize and 10 percent of the global wheat. Enough to cause a myriad of problems for the united states and force them into a more insular posture because of the domestic issues at home coupled with such a large loss of exported crops from Ukraine. \nThere is a ton more to this i imagine. but then we get to the balloon fiasco. Trump allowed Three such balloons to go across the united states without a word. Why is that? ignorance? intention? likely the latter. Being unsure as to what these balloons were collecting or depositing we can imagine they could have been doing anything of significance. Now if we want to do some crazy shit we could say the avian bird flu seems to have come about with some serious audacity. Is it the balloons? maybe which is why they opted to shoot it down in the water and not over land. This is just one possibility with the balloons. Another is that they were monitoring something else. Which is the more likely scenario. I think someone needs to google maps the locations in which is was floating and we can really determine what this particular balloon was doing. Or maybe it is just a communications or weather balloon. Anything is possible in my mind. Everything I have written is likely not the case but it does seem like that is a lot more to this puzzle then we are seeing. We are getting lost in the trees and not seeing the forest sadly because it is a constant barrage of bullshit. \nAnyway, I think that Russia, China, Trump and others who follow him are seeking to undermine our government and sow chaos for both Russia and China. There are just too many connections that make sense and I have touched on Two maybe connections. I just wonder what the government is not telling us and how far a long they really are in dealing with these things.",
">\n\nNow that Republicans know that Trump allowed three Chinese CCP balloons pass across the US during his tenure, they will now start railing on Biden for daring China and possible war by blowing up the CCP balloon.",
">\n\nIn fairness, three times during the Trump administration, China sent a balloon over the US, to no response. It might seem reasonable that we've decided to ignore stuff that's inconvenient to deal with.",
">\n\nI completely understand china’s stance here. They should be able to surveil other countries with out repercussion because the obvious unspoken law of “China can do whatever it wants” wasn’t taken into account. Obviously if another country attempted to do the same i’m they couldn’t because of the other unspoken law of. “You’re not china”",
">\n\nFor shooting a balloon? Man this story is getting weirder and weirder. I'd have thought they just let this one go - what the duck is happening here. \nNext thing I know we're going to find out there was an alien involved and there's a secret organization called Xcom",
">\n\nAnd China flying a spy balloon over the U.S. isn’t “violation of international practice”. Fuck off",
">\n\ni swear the only group with thinner skin that US conservatives are the CCP.",
">\n\nChina, do us all a favor and fuck off. Your country is a god damn disaster right now. \n*How much of a disaster are they?\nChina’s so fucked up that they make the us congress look like a highly functional institution.",
">\n\nXi, go eat some honey and calm down, and for the love of God, put some pants on.",
">\n\nLet’s send a spy ballon into their territory and see what their response is. \nWe can call it a weather balloon as well.",
">\n\nOr a gender reveal party trick gone wrong",
">\n\nGive me a break. You violated the United States sovereignty and borders.",
">\n\nTheir response feels trumpian. How dare you shoot down our illegal spy balloons conducting illegal surveillance. That has to be illegal and we will hold you accountable for it...",
">\n\nSo they'd be fine with us sending surveillance balloons over China? \nFFS China, you can't be serious here.",
">\n\nFine China, next time one of our weather balloons enters your airspace, you get to shoot it down.",
">\n\nGo home china you’re drunk",
">\n\nChina thinks they have a right to our airspace? It’s a clear provocation.",
">\n\nRepercussions for shooting down what they claimed was a “weather balloon” that went off course? They must take their weather seriously in China.",
">\n\nChina should not intervene in other countries' internal affairs, as they themselves would say.,",
">\n\nBig whoop wanna fight about it China ?",
">\n\nOh cool so Xi woulda been cool with us sending a balloon over Beijing right?",
">\n\nIt’s funny that China says it was a private companies balloon. When there are no “private “ companies in China. They are all beholden to the CCP",
">\n\nWhina gonna whine",
">\n\nchina needs a firm dose of reality",
">\n\nThe US probably waited till the American people saw it. To make news and become public aware. The fact that china is saying shooting it down was wrong of the US, makes me want to slap them.. being in our air space uninvited is way worse.",
">\n\nYawn……..",
">\n\nbut we’ve been told by maga that Biden only did this because China signed off. So which is it",
">\n\nI'm curios if the Chinese were asked to land the balloon before it was shot down. They had plenty of time, if a plane entered a County's airspace without permission it would be ordered to land before it was shot down."
] |
>
How’s your boy Russia doing?
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?",
">\n\nAfter the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous",
">\n\nOh China, go fuck yourself.",
">\n\nSo exciting, going to war over a hot air balloon",
">\n\nI think China wanted the US to down it right away so they could paint America as hysterical and trigger happy and violent. When that didn’t happen, it looks like they didn’t have a plan B, so just nonsensically went with the original narrative leaving everyone to scratch their heads. It’s like when they got themselves kicked out of the Nobel ceremony and had their own, or when trumps team mistakenly held a press conference in a lawn store.",
">\n\nWe hurt winnie the poohs feelings :(",
">\n\nI see a lot of posts about trump letting three balloons float around. I do not want to seem like a conspiracy theorist but here it goes. Trump if he is a Russia shill for Putin is also a shill for china it doesn't take that much brain power to make that connection being that both Russia and china work together often times. The tariffs against china during the trump administration were an intentional economic slight against the American public to weaken our economic ability to address an attack on either Ukraine or Taiwan. \nSpecifically toward our farm exports and imports but also largely steel and aluminum. This is a deflection of course in order to take the spot light off of Russian aggression and to hamstring our ability to be in a strong economic position this also on the heels of the pandemic which was not an expected factor of course but obliterated the global supply chain causing extreme economic strife. You could argue that it was intentional but that is wacky and far right bullshit. Now that the tariffs are out of the way we can then look at. The next piece which is the war in Ukraine. Trump committed to false election claims that inspired right wing nut jobs to storm the capitol and if successful would have prevented our government from not only transitioning a new presidency but could have made our government ineffective to move on Russia invading Ukraine and potentially China invading Taiwan being that they could transition imports and exports to a newly revitalized war machine in Russia that successful stormed Ukraine taking 16 percent of the maize and 10 percent of the global wheat. Enough to cause a myriad of problems for the united states and force them into a more insular posture because of the domestic issues at home coupled with such a large loss of exported crops from Ukraine. \nThere is a ton more to this i imagine. but then we get to the balloon fiasco. Trump allowed Three such balloons to go across the united states without a word. Why is that? ignorance? intention? likely the latter. Being unsure as to what these balloons were collecting or depositing we can imagine they could have been doing anything of significance. Now if we want to do some crazy shit we could say the avian bird flu seems to have come about with some serious audacity. Is it the balloons? maybe which is why they opted to shoot it down in the water and not over land. This is just one possibility with the balloons. Another is that they were monitoring something else. Which is the more likely scenario. I think someone needs to google maps the locations in which is was floating and we can really determine what this particular balloon was doing. Or maybe it is just a communications or weather balloon. Anything is possible in my mind. Everything I have written is likely not the case but it does seem like that is a lot more to this puzzle then we are seeing. We are getting lost in the trees and not seeing the forest sadly because it is a constant barrage of bullshit. \nAnyway, I think that Russia, China, Trump and others who follow him are seeking to undermine our government and sow chaos for both Russia and China. There are just too many connections that make sense and I have touched on Two maybe connections. I just wonder what the government is not telling us and how far a long they really are in dealing with these things.",
">\n\nNow that Republicans know that Trump allowed three Chinese CCP balloons pass across the US during his tenure, they will now start railing on Biden for daring China and possible war by blowing up the CCP balloon.",
">\n\nIn fairness, three times during the Trump administration, China sent a balloon over the US, to no response. It might seem reasonable that we've decided to ignore stuff that's inconvenient to deal with.",
">\n\nI completely understand china’s stance here. They should be able to surveil other countries with out repercussion because the obvious unspoken law of “China can do whatever it wants” wasn’t taken into account. Obviously if another country attempted to do the same i’m they couldn’t because of the other unspoken law of. “You’re not china”",
">\n\nFor shooting a balloon? Man this story is getting weirder and weirder. I'd have thought they just let this one go - what the duck is happening here. \nNext thing I know we're going to find out there was an alien involved and there's a secret organization called Xcom",
">\n\nAnd China flying a spy balloon over the U.S. isn’t “violation of international practice”. Fuck off",
">\n\ni swear the only group with thinner skin that US conservatives are the CCP.",
">\n\nChina, do us all a favor and fuck off. Your country is a god damn disaster right now. \n*How much of a disaster are they?\nChina’s so fucked up that they make the us congress look like a highly functional institution.",
">\n\nXi, go eat some honey and calm down, and for the love of God, put some pants on.",
">\n\nLet’s send a spy ballon into their territory and see what their response is. \nWe can call it a weather balloon as well.",
">\n\nOr a gender reveal party trick gone wrong",
">\n\nGive me a break. You violated the United States sovereignty and borders.",
">\n\nTheir response feels trumpian. How dare you shoot down our illegal spy balloons conducting illegal surveillance. That has to be illegal and we will hold you accountable for it...",
">\n\nSo they'd be fine with us sending surveillance balloons over China? \nFFS China, you can't be serious here.",
">\n\nFine China, next time one of our weather balloons enters your airspace, you get to shoot it down.",
">\n\nGo home china you’re drunk",
">\n\nChina thinks they have a right to our airspace? It’s a clear provocation.",
">\n\nRepercussions for shooting down what they claimed was a “weather balloon” that went off course? They must take their weather seriously in China.",
">\n\nChina should not intervene in other countries' internal affairs, as they themselves would say.,",
">\n\nBig whoop wanna fight about it China ?",
">\n\nOh cool so Xi woulda been cool with us sending a balloon over Beijing right?",
">\n\nIt’s funny that China says it was a private companies balloon. When there are no “private “ companies in China. They are all beholden to the CCP",
">\n\nWhina gonna whine",
">\n\nchina needs a firm dose of reality",
">\n\nThe US probably waited till the American people saw it. To make news and become public aware. The fact that china is saying shooting it down was wrong of the US, makes me want to slap them.. being in our air space uninvited is way worse.",
">\n\nYawn……..",
">\n\nbut we’ve been told by maga that Biden only did this because China signed off. So which is it",
">\n\nI'm curios if the Chinese were asked to land the balloon before it was shot down. They had plenty of time, if a plane entered a County's airspace without permission it would be ordered to land before it was shot down.",
">\n\nThey are gonna send an even bigger balloon this time!"
] |
>
China started it, we finished it. If they wanted it back, they should have come get it (with permission, naturally).
I am very curious now to see what the contents reveal.
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?",
">\n\nAfter the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous",
">\n\nOh China, go fuck yourself.",
">\n\nSo exciting, going to war over a hot air balloon",
">\n\nI think China wanted the US to down it right away so they could paint America as hysterical and trigger happy and violent. When that didn’t happen, it looks like they didn’t have a plan B, so just nonsensically went with the original narrative leaving everyone to scratch their heads. It’s like when they got themselves kicked out of the Nobel ceremony and had their own, or when trumps team mistakenly held a press conference in a lawn store.",
">\n\nWe hurt winnie the poohs feelings :(",
">\n\nI see a lot of posts about trump letting three balloons float around. I do not want to seem like a conspiracy theorist but here it goes. Trump if he is a Russia shill for Putin is also a shill for china it doesn't take that much brain power to make that connection being that both Russia and china work together often times. The tariffs against china during the trump administration were an intentional economic slight against the American public to weaken our economic ability to address an attack on either Ukraine or Taiwan. \nSpecifically toward our farm exports and imports but also largely steel and aluminum. This is a deflection of course in order to take the spot light off of Russian aggression and to hamstring our ability to be in a strong economic position this also on the heels of the pandemic which was not an expected factor of course but obliterated the global supply chain causing extreme economic strife. You could argue that it was intentional but that is wacky and far right bullshit. Now that the tariffs are out of the way we can then look at. The next piece which is the war in Ukraine. Trump committed to false election claims that inspired right wing nut jobs to storm the capitol and if successful would have prevented our government from not only transitioning a new presidency but could have made our government ineffective to move on Russia invading Ukraine and potentially China invading Taiwan being that they could transition imports and exports to a newly revitalized war machine in Russia that successful stormed Ukraine taking 16 percent of the maize and 10 percent of the global wheat. Enough to cause a myriad of problems for the united states and force them into a more insular posture because of the domestic issues at home coupled with such a large loss of exported crops from Ukraine. \nThere is a ton more to this i imagine. but then we get to the balloon fiasco. Trump allowed Three such balloons to go across the united states without a word. Why is that? ignorance? intention? likely the latter. Being unsure as to what these balloons were collecting or depositing we can imagine they could have been doing anything of significance. Now if we want to do some crazy shit we could say the avian bird flu seems to have come about with some serious audacity. Is it the balloons? maybe which is why they opted to shoot it down in the water and not over land. This is just one possibility with the balloons. Another is that they were monitoring something else. Which is the more likely scenario. I think someone needs to google maps the locations in which is was floating and we can really determine what this particular balloon was doing. Or maybe it is just a communications or weather balloon. Anything is possible in my mind. Everything I have written is likely not the case but it does seem like that is a lot more to this puzzle then we are seeing. We are getting lost in the trees and not seeing the forest sadly because it is a constant barrage of bullshit. \nAnyway, I think that Russia, China, Trump and others who follow him are seeking to undermine our government and sow chaos for both Russia and China. There are just too many connections that make sense and I have touched on Two maybe connections. I just wonder what the government is not telling us and how far a long they really are in dealing with these things.",
">\n\nNow that Republicans know that Trump allowed three Chinese CCP balloons pass across the US during his tenure, they will now start railing on Biden for daring China and possible war by blowing up the CCP balloon.",
">\n\nIn fairness, three times during the Trump administration, China sent a balloon over the US, to no response. It might seem reasonable that we've decided to ignore stuff that's inconvenient to deal with.",
">\n\nI completely understand china’s stance here. They should be able to surveil other countries with out repercussion because the obvious unspoken law of “China can do whatever it wants” wasn’t taken into account. Obviously if another country attempted to do the same i’m they couldn’t because of the other unspoken law of. “You’re not china”",
">\n\nFor shooting a balloon? Man this story is getting weirder and weirder. I'd have thought they just let this one go - what the duck is happening here. \nNext thing I know we're going to find out there was an alien involved and there's a secret organization called Xcom",
">\n\nAnd China flying a spy balloon over the U.S. isn’t “violation of international practice”. Fuck off",
">\n\ni swear the only group with thinner skin that US conservatives are the CCP.",
">\n\nChina, do us all a favor and fuck off. Your country is a god damn disaster right now. \n*How much of a disaster are they?\nChina’s so fucked up that they make the us congress look like a highly functional institution.",
">\n\nXi, go eat some honey and calm down, and for the love of God, put some pants on.",
">\n\nLet’s send a spy ballon into their territory and see what their response is. \nWe can call it a weather balloon as well.",
">\n\nOr a gender reveal party trick gone wrong",
">\n\nGive me a break. You violated the United States sovereignty and borders.",
">\n\nTheir response feels trumpian. How dare you shoot down our illegal spy balloons conducting illegal surveillance. That has to be illegal and we will hold you accountable for it...",
">\n\nSo they'd be fine with us sending surveillance balloons over China? \nFFS China, you can't be serious here.",
">\n\nFine China, next time one of our weather balloons enters your airspace, you get to shoot it down.",
">\n\nGo home china you’re drunk",
">\n\nChina thinks they have a right to our airspace? It’s a clear provocation.",
">\n\nRepercussions for shooting down what they claimed was a “weather balloon” that went off course? They must take their weather seriously in China.",
">\n\nChina should not intervene in other countries' internal affairs, as they themselves would say.,",
">\n\nBig whoop wanna fight about it China ?",
">\n\nOh cool so Xi woulda been cool with us sending a balloon over Beijing right?",
">\n\nIt’s funny that China says it was a private companies balloon. When there are no “private “ companies in China. They are all beholden to the CCP",
">\n\nWhina gonna whine",
">\n\nchina needs a firm dose of reality",
">\n\nThe US probably waited till the American people saw it. To make news and become public aware. The fact that china is saying shooting it down was wrong of the US, makes me want to slap them.. being in our air space uninvited is way worse.",
">\n\nYawn……..",
">\n\nbut we’ve been told by maga that Biden only did this because China signed off. So which is it",
">\n\nI'm curios if the Chinese were asked to land the balloon before it was shot down. They had plenty of time, if a plane entered a County's airspace without permission it would be ordered to land before it was shot down.",
">\n\nThey are gonna send an even bigger balloon this time!",
">\n\nHow’s your boy Russia doing?"
] |
>
There is zero chance this statement was meant to be taken seriously
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?",
">\n\nAfter the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous",
">\n\nOh China, go fuck yourself.",
">\n\nSo exciting, going to war over a hot air balloon",
">\n\nI think China wanted the US to down it right away so they could paint America as hysterical and trigger happy and violent. When that didn’t happen, it looks like they didn’t have a plan B, so just nonsensically went with the original narrative leaving everyone to scratch their heads. It’s like when they got themselves kicked out of the Nobel ceremony and had their own, or when trumps team mistakenly held a press conference in a lawn store.",
">\n\nWe hurt winnie the poohs feelings :(",
">\n\nI see a lot of posts about trump letting three balloons float around. I do not want to seem like a conspiracy theorist but here it goes. Trump if he is a Russia shill for Putin is also a shill for china it doesn't take that much brain power to make that connection being that both Russia and china work together often times. The tariffs against china during the trump administration were an intentional economic slight against the American public to weaken our economic ability to address an attack on either Ukraine or Taiwan. \nSpecifically toward our farm exports and imports but also largely steel and aluminum. This is a deflection of course in order to take the spot light off of Russian aggression and to hamstring our ability to be in a strong economic position this also on the heels of the pandemic which was not an expected factor of course but obliterated the global supply chain causing extreme economic strife. You could argue that it was intentional but that is wacky and far right bullshit. Now that the tariffs are out of the way we can then look at. The next piece which is the war in Ukraine. Trump committed to false election claims that inspired right wing nut jobs to storm the capitol and if successful would have prevented our government from not only transitioning a new presidency but could have made our government ineffective to move on Russia invading Ukraine and potentially China invading Taiwan being that they could transition imports and exports to a newly revitalized war machine in Russia that successful stormed Ukraine taking 16 percent of the maize and 10 percent of the global wheat. Enough to cause a myriad of problems for the united states and force them into a more insular posture because of the domestic issues at home coupled with such a large loss of exported crops from Ukraine. \nThere is a ton more to this i imagine. but then we get to the balloon fiasco. Trump allowed Three such balloons to go across the united states without a word. Why is that? ignorance? intention? likely the latter. Being unsure as to what these balloons were collecting or depositing we can imagine they could have been doing anything of significance. Now if we want to do some crazy shit we could say the avian bird flu seems to have come about with some serious audacity. Is it the balloons? maybe which is why they opted to shoot it down in the water and not over land. This is just one possibility with the balloons. Another is that they were monitoring something else. Which is the more likely scenario. I think someone needs to google maps the locations in which is was floating and we can really determine what this particular balloon was doing. Or maybe it is just a communications or weather balloon. Anything is possible in my mind. Everything I have written is likely not the case but it does seem like that is a lot more to this puzzle then we are seeing. We are getting lost in the trees and not seeing the forest sadly because it is a constant barrage of bullshit. \nAnyway, I think that Russia, China, Trump and others who follow him are seeking to undermine our government and sow chaos for both Russia and China. There are just too many connections that make sense and I have touched on Two maybe connections. I just wonder what the government is not telling us and how far a long they really are in dealing with these things.",
">\n\nNow that Republicans know that Trump allowed three Chinese CCP balloons pass across the US during his tenure, they will now start railing on Biden for daring China and possible war by blowing up the CCP balloon.",
">\n\nIn fairness, three times during the Trump administration, China sent a balloon over the US, to no response. It might seem reasonable that we've decided to ignore stuff that's inconvenient to deal with.",
">\n\nI completely understand china’s stance here. They should be able to surveil other countries with out repercussion because the obvious unspoken law of “China can do whatever it wants” wasn’t taken into account. Obviously if another country attempted to do the same i’m they couldn’t because of the other unspoken law of. “You’re not china”",
">\n\nFor shooting a balloon? Man this story is getting weirder and weirder. I'd have thought they just let this one go - what the duck is happening here. \nNext thing I know we're going to find out there was an alien involved and there's a secret organization called Xcom",
">\n\nAnd China flying a spy balloon over the U.S. isn’t “violation of international practice”. Fuck off",
">\n\ni swear the only group with thinner skin that US conservatives are the CCP.",
">\n\nChina, do us all a favor and fuck off. Your country is a god damn disaster right now. \n*How much of a disaster are they?\nChina’s so fucked up that they make the us congress look like a highly functional institution.",
">\n\nXi, go eat some honey and calm down, and for the love of God, put some pants on.",
">\n\nLet’s send a spy ballon into their territory and see what their response is. \nWe can call it a weather balloon as well.",
">\n\nOr a gender reveal party trick gone wrong",
">\n\nGive me a break. You violated the United States sovereignty and borders.",
">\n\nTheir response feels trumpian. How dare you shoot down our illegal spy balloons conducting illegal surveillance. That has to be illegal and we will hold you accountable for it...",
">\n\nSo they'd be fine with us sending surveillance balloons over China? \nFFS China, you can't be serious here.",
">\n\nFine China, next time one of our weather balloons enters your airspace, you get to shoot it down.",
">\n\nGo home china you’re drunk",
">\n\nChina thinks they have a right to our airspace? It’s a clear provocation.",
">\n\nRepercussions for shooting down what they claimed was a “weather balloon” that went off course? They must take their weather seriously in China.",
">\n\nChina should not intervene in other countries' internal affairs, as they themselves would say.,",
">\n\nBig whoop wanna fight about it China ?",
">\n\nOh cool so Xi woulda been cool with us sending a balloon over Beijing right?",
">\n\nIt’s funny that China says it was a private companies balloon. When there are no “private “ companies in China. They are all beholden to the CCP",
">\n\nWhina gonna whine",
">\n\nchina needs a firm dose of reality",
">\n\nThe US probably waited till the American people saw it. To make news and become public aware. The fact that china is saying shooting it down was wrong of the US, makes me want to slap them.. being in our air space uninvited is way worse.",
">\n\nYawn……..",
">\n\nbut we’ve been told by maga that Biden only did this because China signed off. So which is it",
">\n\nI'm curios if the Chinese were asked to land the balloon before it was shot down. They had plenty of time, if a plane entered a County's airspace without permission it would be ordered to land before it was shot down.",
">\n\nThey are gonna send an even bigger balloon this time!",
">\n\nHow’s your boy Russia doing?",
">\n\nChina started it, we finished it. If they wanted it back, they should have come get it (with permission, naturally).\nI am very curious now to see what the contents reveal."
] |
>
I’m sorry we violated your aerial surveillance balls
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?",
">\n\nAfter the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous",
">\n\nOh China, go fuck yourself.",
">\n\nSo exciting, going to war over a hot air balloon",
">\n\nI think China wanted the US to down it right away so they could paint America as hysterical and trigger happy and violent. When that didn’t happen, it looks like they didn’t have a plan B, so just nonsensically went with the original narrative leaving everyone to scratch their heads. It’s like when they got themselves kicked out of the Nobel ceremony and had their own, or when trumps team mistakenly held a press conference in a lawn store.",
">\n\nWe hurt winnie the poohs feelings :(",
">\n\nI see a lot of posts about trump letting three balloons float around. I do not want to seem like a conspiracy theorist but here it goes. Trump if he is a Russia shill for Putin is also a shill for china it doesn't take that much brain power to make that connection being that both Russia and china work together often times. The tariffs against china during the trump administration were an intentional economic slight against the American public to weaken our economic ability to address an attack on either Ukraine or Taiwan. \nSpecifically toward our farm exports and imports but also largely steel and aluminum. This is a deflection of course in order to take the spot light off of Russian aggression and to hamstring our ability to be in a strong economic position this also on the heels of the pandemic which was not an expected factor of course but obliterated the global supply chain causing extreme economic strife. You could argue that it was intentional but that is wacky and far right bullshit. Now that the tariffs are out of the way we can then look at. The next piece which is the war in Ukraine. Trump committed to false election claims that inspired right wing nut jobs to storm the capitol and if successful would have prevented our government from not only transitioning a new presidency but could have made our government ineffective to move on Russia invading Ukraine and potentially China invading Taiwan being that they could transition imports and exports to a newly revitalized war machine in Russia that successful stormed Ukraine taking 16 percent of the maize and 10 percent of the global wheat. Enough to cause a myriad of problems for the united states and force them into a more insular posture because of the domestic issues at home coupled with such a large loss of exported crops from Ukraine. \nThere is a ton more to this i imagine. but then we get to the balloon fiasco. Trump allowed Three such balloons to go across the united states without a word. Why is that? ignorance? intention? likely the latter. Being unsure as to what these balloons were collecting or depositing we can imagine they could have been doing anything of significance. Now if we want to do some crazy shit we could say the avian bird flu seems to have come about with some serious audacity. Is it the balloons? maybe which is why they opted to shoot it down in the water and not over land. This is just one possibility with the balloons. Another is that they were monitoring something else. Which is the more likely scenario. I think someone needs to google maps the locations in which is was floating and we can really determine what this particular balloon was doing. Or maybe it is just a communications or weather balloon. Anything is possible in my mind. Everything I have written is likely not the case but it does seem like that is a lot more to this puzzle then we are seeing. We are getting lost in the trees and not seeing the forest sadly because it is a constant barrage of bullshit. \nAnyway, I think that Russia, China, Trump and others who follow him are seeking to undermine our government and sow chaos for both Russia and China. There are just too many connections that make sense and I have touched on Two maybe connections. I just wonder what the government is not telling us and how far a long they really are in dealing with these things.",
">\n\nNow that Republicans know that Trump allowed three Chinese CCP balloons pass across the US during his tenure, they will now start railing on Biden for daring China and possible war by blowing up the CCP balloon.",
">\n\nIn fairness, three times during the Trump administration, China sent a balloon over the US, to no response. It might seem reasonable that we've decided to ignore stuff that's inconvenient to deal with.",
">\n\nI completely understand china’s stance here. They should be able to surveil other countries with out repercussion because the obvious unspoken law of “China can do whatever it wants” wasn’t taken into account. Obviously if another country attempted to do the same i’m they couldn’t because of the other unspoken law of. “You’re not china”",
">\n\nFor shooting a balloon? Man this story is getting weirder and weirder. I'd have thought they just let this one go - what the duck is happening here. \nNext thing I know we're going to find out there was an alien involved and there's a secret organization called Xcom",
">\n\nAnd China flying a spy balloon over the U.S. isn’t “violation of international practice”. Fuck off",
">\n\ni swear the only group with thinner skin that US conservatives are the CCP.",
">\n\nChina, do us all a favor and fuck off. Your country is a god damn disaster right now. \n*How much of a disaster are they?\nChina’s so fucked up that they make the us congress look like a highly functional institution.",
">\n\nXi, go eat some honey and calm down, and for the love of God, put some pants on.",
">\n\nLet’s send a spy ballon into their territory and see what their response is. \nWe can call it a weather balloon as well.",
">\n\nOr a gender reveal party trick gone wrong",
">\n\nGive me a break. You violated the United States sovereignty and borders.",
">\n\nTheir response feels trumpian. How dare you shoot down our illegal spy balloons conducting illegal surveillance. That has to be illegal and we will hold you accountable for it...",
">\n\nSo they'd be fine with us sending surveillance balloons over China? \nFFS China, you can't be serious here.",
">\n\nFine China, next time one of our weather balloons enters your airspace, you get to shoot it down.",
">\n\nGo home china you’re drunk",
">\n\nChina thinks they have a right to our airspace? It’s a clear provocation.",
">\n\nRepercussions for shooting down what they claimed was a “weather balloon” that went off course? They must take their weather seriously in China.",
">\n\nChina should not intervene in other countries' internal affairs, as they themselves would say.,",
">\n\nBig whoop wanna fight about it China ?",
">\n\nOh cool so Xi woulda been cool with us sending a balloon over Beijing right?",
">\n\nIt’s funny that China says it was a private companies balloon. When there are no “private “ companies in China. They are all beholden to the CCP",
">\n\nWhina gonna whine",
">\n\nchina needs a firm dose of reality",
">\n\nThe US probably waited till the American people saw it. To make news and become public aware. The fact that china is saying shooting it down was wrong of the US, makes me want to slap them.. being in our air space uninvited is way worse.",
">\n\nYawn……..",
">\n\nbut we’ve been told by maga that Biden only did this because China signed off. So which is it",
">\n\nI'm curios if the Chinese were asked to land the balloon before it was shot down. They had plenty of time, if a plane entered a County's airspace without permission it would be ordered to land before it was shot down.",
">\n\nThey are gonna send an even bigger balloon this time!",
">\n\nHow’s your boy Russia doing?",
">\n\nChina started it, we finished it. If they wanted it back, they should have come get it (with permission, naturally).\nI am very curious now to see what the contents reveal.",
">\n\nThere is zero chance this statement was meant to be taken seriously"
] |
>
China is not a military threat so their threats in that sense are empty.
They are, however, an economic threat and could wreak some havoc there if they so chose.
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?",
">\n\nAfter the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous",
">\n\nOh China, go fuck yourself.",
">\n\nSo exciting, going to war over a hot air balloon",
">\n\nI think China wanted the US to down it right away so they could paint America as hysterical and trigger happy and violent. When that didn’t happen, it looks like they didn’t have a plan B, so just nonsensically went with the original narrative leaving everyone to scratch their heads. It’s like when they got themselves kicked out of the Nobel ceremony and had their own, or when trumps team mistakenly held a press conference in a lawn store.",
">\n\nWe hurt winnie the poohs feelings :(",
">\n\nI see a lot of posts about trump letting three balloons float around. I do not want to seem like a conspiracy theorist but here it goes. Trump if he is a Russia shill for Putin is also a shill for china it doesn't take that much brain power to make that connection being that both Russia and china work together often times. The tariffs against china during the trump administration were an intentional economic slight against the American public to weaken our economic ability to address an attack on either Ukraine or Taiwan. \nSpecifically toward our farm exports and imports but also largely steel and aluminum. This is a deflection of course in order to take the spot light off of Russian aggression and to hamstring our ability to be in a strong economic position this also on the heels of the pandemic which was not an expected factor of course but obliterated the global supply chain causing extreme economic strife. You could argue that it was intentional but that is wacky and far right bullshit. Now that the tariffs are out of the way we can then look at. The next piece which is the war in Ukraine. Trump committed to false election claims that inspired right wing nut jobs to storm the capitol and if successful would have prevented our government from not only transitioning a new presidency but could have made our government ineffective to move on Russia invading Ukraine and potentially China invading Taiwan being that they could transition imports and exports to a newly revitalized war machine in Russia that successful stormed Ukraine taking 16 percent of the maize and 10 percent of the global wheat. Enough to cause a myriad of problems for the united states and force them into a more insular posture because of the domestic issues at home coupled with such a large loss of exported crops from Ukraine. \nThere is a ton more to this i imagine. but then we get to the balloon fiasco. Trump allowed Three such balloons to go across the united states without a word. Why is that? ignorance? intention? likely the latter. Being unsure as to what these balloons were collecting or depositing we can imagine they could have been doing anything of significance. Now if we want to do some crazy shit we could say the avian bird flu seems to have come about with some serious audacity. Is it the balloons? maybe which is why they opted to shoot it down in the water and not over land. This is just one possibility with the balloons. Another is that they were monitoring something else. Which is the more likely scenario. I think someone needs to google maps the locations in which is was floating and we can really determine what this particular balloon was doing. Or maybe it is just a communications or weather balloon. Anything is possible in my mind. Everything I have written is likely not the case but it does seem like that is a lot more to this puzzle then we are seeing. We are getting lost in the trees and not seeing the forest sadly because it is a constant barrage of bullshit. \nAnyway, I think that Russia, China, Trump and others who follow him are seeking to undermine our government and sow chaos for both Russia and China. There are just too many connections that make sense and I have touched on Two maybe connections. I just wonder what the government is not telling us and how far a long they really are in dealing with these things.",
">\n\nNow that Republicans know that Trump allowed three Chinese CCP balloons pass across the US during his tenure, they will now start railing on Biden for daring China and possible war by blowing up the CCP balloon.",
">\n\nIn fairness, three times during the Trump administration, China sent a balloon over the US, to no response. It might seem reasonable that we've decided to ignore stuff that's inconvenient to deal with.",
">\n\nI completely understand china’s stance here. They should be able to surveil other countries with out repercussion because the obvious unspoken law of “China can do whatever it wants” wasn’t taken into account. Obviously if another country attempted to do the same i’m they couldn’t because of the other unspoken law of. “You’re not china”",
">\n\nFor shooting a balloon? Man this story is getting weirder and weirder. I'd have thought they just let this one go - what the duck is happening here. \nNext thing I know we're going to find out there was an alien involved and there's a secret organization called Xcom",
">\n\nAnd China flying a spy balloon over the U.S. isn’t “violation of international practice”. Fuck off",
">\n\ni swear the only group with thinner skin that US conservatives are the CCP.",
">\n\nChina, do us all a favor and fuck off. Your country is a god damn disaster right now. \n*How much of a disaster are they?\nChina’s so fucked up that they make the us congress look like a highly functional institution.",
">\n\nXi, go eat some honey and calm down, and for the love of God, put some pants on.",
">\n\nLet’s send a spy ballon into their territory and see what their response is. \nWe can call it a weather balloon as well.",
">\n\nOr a gender reveal party trick gone wrong",
">\n\nGive me a break. You violated the United States sovereignty and borders.",
">\n\nTheir response feels trumpian. How dare you shoot down our illegal spy balloons conducting illegal surveillance. That has to be illegal and we will hold you accountable for it...",
">\n\nSo they'd be fine with us sending surveillance balloons over China? \nFFS China, you can't be serious here.",
">\n\nFine China, next time one of our weather balloons enters your airspace, you get to shoot it down.",
">\n\nGo home china you’re drunk",
">\n\nChina thinks they have a right to our airspace? It’s a clear provocation.",
">\n\nRepercussions for shooting down what they claimed was a “weather balloon” that went off course? They must take their weather seriously in China.",
">\n\nChina should not intervene in other countries' internal affairs, as they themselves would say.,",
">\n\nBig whoop wanna fight about it China ?",
">\n\nOh cool so Xi woulda been cool with us sending a balloon over Beijing right?",
">\n\nIt’s funny that China says it was a private companies balloon. When there are no “private “ companies in China. They are all beholden to the CCP",
">\n\nWhina gonna whine",
">\n\nchina needs a firm dose of reality",
">\n\nThe US probably waited till the American people saw it. To make news and become public aware. The fact that china is saying shooting it down was wrong of the US, makes me want to slap them.. being in our air space uninvited is way worse.",
">\n\nYawn……..",
">\n\nbut we’ve been told by maga that Biden only did this because China signed off. So which is it",
">\n\nI'm curios if the Chinese were asked to land the balloon before it was shot down. They had plenty of time, if a plane entered a County's airspace without permission it would be ordered to land before it was shot down.",
">\n\nThey are gonna send an even bigger balloon this time!",
">\n\nHow’s your boy Russia doing?",
">\n\nChina started it, we finished it. If they wanted it back, they should have come get it (with permission, naturally).\nI am very curious now to see what the contents reveal.",
">\n\nThere is zero chance this statement was meant to be taken seriously",
">\n\nI’m sorry we violated your aerial surveillance balls"
] |
>
I never thought World War III would start from popping Chinas balloon. But it is a sensitive Pooh on the other side lol. Ironically like Pooh bear. 🤔
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?",
">\n\nAfter the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous",
">\n\nOh China, go fuck yourself.",
">\n\nSo exciting, going to war over a hot air balloon",
">\n\nI think China wanted the US to down it right away so they could paint America as hysterical and trigger happy and violent. When that didn’t happen, it looks like they didn’t have a plan B, so just nonsensically went with the original narrative leaving everyone to scratch their heads. It’s like when they got themselves kicked out of the Nobel ceremony and had their own, or when trumps team mistakenly held a press conference in a lawn store.",
">\n\nWe hurt winnie the poohs feelings :(",
">\n\nI see a lot of posts about trump letting three balloons float around. I do not want to seem like a conspiracy theorist but here it goes. Trump if he is a Russia shill for Putin is also a shill for china it doesn't take that much brain power to make that connection being that both Russia and china work together often times. The tariffs against china during the trump administration were an intentional economic slight against the American public to weaken our economic ability to address an attack on either Ukraine or Taiwan. \nSpecifically toward our farm exports and imports but also largely steel and aluminum. This is a deflection of course in order to take the spot light off of Russian aggression and to hamstring our ability to be in a strong economic position this also on the heels of the pandemic which was not an expected factor of course but obliterated the global supply chain causing extreme economic strife. You could argue that it was intentional but that is wacky and far right bullshit. Now that the tariffs are out of the way we can then look at. The next piece which is the war in Ukraine. Trump committed to false election claims that inspired right wing nut jobs to storm the capitol and if successful would have prevented our government from not only transitioning a new presidency but could have made our government ineffective to move on Russia invading Ukraine and potentially China invading Taiwan being that they could transition imports and exports to a newly revitalized war machine in Russia that successful stormed Ukraine taking 16 percent of the maize and 10 percent of the global wheat. Enough to cause a myriad of problems for the united states and force them into a more insular posture because of the domestic issues at home coupled with such a large loss of exported crops from Ukraine. \nThere is a ton more to this i imagine. but then we get to the balloon fiasco. Trump allowed Three such balloons to go across the united states without a word. Why is that? ignorance? intention? likely the latter. Being unsure as to what these balloons were collecting or depositing we can imagine they could have been doing anything of significance. Now if we want to do some crazy shit we could say the avian bird flu seems to have come about with some serious audacity. Is it the balloons? maybe which is why they opted to shoot it down in the water and not over land. This is just one possibility with the balloons. Another is that they were monitoring something else. Which is the more likely scenario. I think someone needs to google maps the locations in which is was floating and we can really determine what this particular balloon was doing. Or maybe it is just a communications or weather balloon. Anything is possible in my mind. Everything I have written is likely not the case but it does seem like that is a lot more to this puzzle then we are seeing. We are getting lost in the trees and not seeing the forest sadly because it is a constant barrage of bullshit. \nAnyway, I think that Russia, China, Trump and others who follow him are seeking to undermine our government and sow chaos for both Russia and China. There are just too many connections that make sense and I have touched on Two maybe connections. I just wonder what the government is not telling us and how far a long they really are in dealing with these things.",
">\n\nNow that Republicans know that Trump allowed three Chinese CCP balloons pass across the US during his tenure, they will now start railing on Biden for daring China and possible war by blowing up the CCP balloon.",
">\n\nIn fairness, three times during the Trump administration, China sent a balloon over the US, to no response. It might seem reasonable that we've decided to ignore stuff that's inconvenient to deal with.",
">\n\nI completely understand china’s stance here. They should be able to surveil other countries with out repercussion because the obvious unspoken law of “China can do whatever it wants” wasn’t taken into account. Obviously if another country attempted to do the same i’m they couldn’t because of the other unspoken law of. “You’re not china”",
">\n\nFor shooting a balloon? Man this story is getting weirder and weirder. I'd have thought they just let this one go - what the duck is happening here. \nNext thing I know we're going to find out there was an alien involved and there's a secret organization called Xcom",
">\n\nAnd China flying a spy balloon over the U.S. isn’t “violation of international practice”. Fuck off",
">\n\ni swear the only group with thinner skin that US conservatives are the CCP.",
">\n\nChina, do us all a favor and fuck off. Your country is a god damn disaster right now. \n*How much of a disaster are they?\nChina’s so fucked up that they make the us congress look like a highly functional institution.",
">\n\nXi, go eat some honey and calm down, and for the love of God, put some pants on.",
">\n\nLet’s send a spy ballon into their territory and see what their response is. \nWe can call it a weather balloon as well.",
">\n\nOr a gender reveal party trick gone wrong",
">\n\nGive me a break. You violated the United States sovereignty and borders.",
">\n\nTheir response feels trumpian. How dare you shoot down our illegal spy balloons conducting illegal surveillance. That has to be illegal and we will hold you accountable for it...",
">\n\nSo they'd be fine with us sending surveillance balloons over China? \nFFS China, you can't be serious here.",
">\n\nFine China, next time one of our weather balloons enters your airspace, you get to shoot it down.",
">\n\nGo home china you’re drunk",
">\n\nChina thinks they have a right to our airspace? It’s a clear provocation.",
">\n\nRepercussions for shooting down what they claimed was a “weather balloon” that went off course? They must take their weather seriously in China.",
">\n\nChina should not intervene in other countries' internal affairs, as they themselves would say.,",
">\n\nBig whoop wanna fight about it China ?",
">\n\nOh cool so Xi woulda been cool with us sending a balloon over Beijing right?",
">\n\nIt’s funny that China says it was a private companies balloon. When there are no “private “ companies in China. They are all beholden to the CCP",
">\n\nWhina gonna whine",
">\n\nchina needs a firm dose of reality",
">\n\nThe US probably waited till the American people saw it. To make news and become public aware. The fact that china is saying shooting it down was wrong of the US, makes me want to slap them.. being in our air space uninvited is way worse.",
">\n\nYawn……..",
">\n\nbut we’ve been told by maga that Biden only did this because China signed off. So which is it",
">\n\nI'm curios if the Chinese were asked to land the balloon before it was shot down. They had plenty of time, if a plane entered a County's airspace without permission it would be ordered to land before it was shot down.",
">\n\nThey are gonna send an even bigger balloon this time!",
">\n\nHow’s your boy Russia doing?",
">\n\nChina started it, we finished it. If they wanted it back, they should have come get it (with permission, naturally).\nI am very curious now to see what the contents reveal.",
">\n\nThere is zero chance this statement was meant to be taken seriously",
">\n\nI’m sorry we violated your aerial surveillance balls",
">\n\nChina is not a military threat so their threats in that sense are empty.\nThey are, however, an economic threat and could wreak some havoc there if they so chose."
] |
>
Intruding to anoyher country air space is against international law. Therefore, Chinese ballon commit the security breach first and now threaten and bully other countries!
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?",
">\n\nAfter the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous",
">\n\nOh China, go fuck yourself.",
">\n\nSo exciting, going to war over a hot air balloon",
">\n\nI think China wanted the US to down it right away so they could paint America as hysterical and trigger happy and violent. When that didn’t happen, it looks like they didn’t have a plan B, so just nonsensically went with the original narrative leaving everyone to scratch their heads. It’s like when they got themselves kicked out of the Nobel ceremony and had their own, or when trumps team mistakenly held a press conference in a lawn store.",
">\n\nWe hurt winnie the poohs feelings :(",
">\n\nI see a lot of posts about trump letting three balloons float around. I do not want to seem like a conspiracy theorist but here it goes. Trump if he is a Russia shill for Putin is also a shill for china it doesn't take that much brain power to make that connection being that both Russia and china work together often times. The tariffs against china during the trump administration were an intentional economic slight against the American public to weaken our economic ability to address an attack on either Ukraine or Taiwan. \nSpecifically toward our farm exports and imports but also largely steel and aluminum. This is a deflection of course in order to take the spot light off of Russian aggression and to hamstring our ability to be in a strong economic position this also on the heels of the pandemic which was not an expected factor of course but obliterated the global supply chain causing extreme economic strife. You could argue that it was intentional but that is wacky and far right bullshit. Now that the tariffs are out of the way we can then look at. The next piece which is the war in Ukraine. Trump committed to false election claims that inspired right wing nut jobs to storm the capitol and if successful would have prevented our government from not only transitioning a new presidency but could have made our government ineffective to move on Russia invading Ukraine and potentially China invading Taiwan being that they could transition imports and exports to a newly revitalized war machine in Russia that successful stormed Ukraine taking 16 percent of the maize and 10 percent of the global wheat. Enough to cause a myriad of problems for the united states and force them into a more insular posture because of the domestic issues at home coupled with such a large loss of exported crops from Ukraine. \nThere is a ton more to this i imagine. but then we get to the balloon fiasco. Trump allowed Three such balloons to go across the united states without a word. Why is that? ignorance? intention? likely the latter. Being unsure as to what these balloons were collecting or depositing we can imagine they could have been doing anything of significance. Now if we want to do some crazy shit we could say the avian bird flu seems to have come about with some serious audacity. Is it the balloons? maybe which is why they opted to shoot it down in the water and not over land. This is just one possibility with the balloons. Another is that they were monitoring something else. Which is the more likely scenario. I think someone needs to google maps the locations in which is was floating and we can really determine what this particular balloon was doing. Or maybe it is just a communications or weather balloon. Anything is possible in my mind. Everything I have written is likely not the case but it does seem like that is a lot more to this puzzle then we are seeing. We are getting lost in the trees and not seeing the forest sadly because it is a constant barrage of bullshit. \nAnyway, I think that Russia, China, Trump and others who follow him are seeking to undermine our government and sow chaos for both Russia and China. There are just too many connections that make sense and I have touched on Two maybe connections. I just wonder what the government is not telling us and how far a long they really are in dealing with these things.",
">\n\nNow that Republicans know that Trump allowed three Chinese CCP balloons pass across the US during his tenure, they will now start railing on Biden for daring China and possible war by blowing up the CCP balloon.",
">\n\nIn fairness, three times during the Trump administration, China sent a balloon over the US, to no response. It might seem reasonable that we've decided to ignore stuff that's inconvenient to deal with.",
">\n\nI completely understand china’s stance here. They should be able to surveil other countries with out repercussion because the obvious unspoken law of “China can do whatever it wants” wasn’t taken into account. Obviously if another country attempted to do the same i’m they couldn’t because of the other unspoken law of. “You’re not china”",
">\n\nFor shooting a balloon? Man this story is getting weirder and weirder. I'd have thought they just let this one go - what the duck is happening here. \nNext thing I know we're going to find out there was an alien involved and there's a secret organization called Xcom",
">\n\nAnd China flying a spy balloon over the U.S. isn’t “violation of international practice”. Fuck off",
">\n\ni swear the only group with thinner skin that US conservatives are the CCP.",
">\n\nChina, do us all a favor and fuck off. Your country is a god damn disaster right now. \n*How much of a disaster are they?\nChina’s so fucked up that they make the us congress look like a highly functional institution.",
">\n\nXi, go eat some honey and calm down, and for the love of God, put some pants on.",
">\n\nLet’s send a spy ballon into their territory and see what their response is. \nWe can call it a weather balloon as well.",
">\n\nOr a gender reveal party trick gone wrong",
">\n\nGive me a break. You violated the United States sovereignty and borders.",
">\n\nTheir response feels trumpian. How dare you shoot down our illegal spy balloons conducting illegal surveillance. That has to be illegal and we will hold you accountable for it...",
">\n\nSo they'd be fine with us sending surveillance balloons over China? \nFFS China, you can't be serious here.",
">\n\nFine China, next time one of our weather balloons enters your airspace, you get to shoot it down.",
">\n\nGo home china you’re drunk",
">\n\nChina thinks they have a right to our airspace? It’s a clear provocation.",
">\n\nRepercussions for shooting down what they claimed was a “weather balloon” that went off course? They must take their weather seriously in China.",
">\n\nChina should not intervene in other countries' internal affairs, as they themselves would say.,",
">\n\nBig whoop wanna fight about it China ?",
">\n\nOh cool so Xi woulda been cool with us sending a balloon over Beijing right?",
">\n\nIt’s funny that China says it was a private companies balloon. When there are no “private “ companies in China. They are all beholden to the CCP",
">\n\nWhina gonna whine",
">\n\nchina needs a firm dose of reality",
">\n\nThe US probably waited till the American people saw it. To make news and become public aware. The fact that china is saying shooting it down was wrong of the US, makes me want to slap them.. being in our air space uninvited is way worse.",
">\n\nYawn……..",
">\n\nbut we’ve been told by maga that Biden only did this because China signed off. So which is it",
">\n\nI'm curios if the Chinese were asked to land the balloon before it was shot down. They had plenty of time, if a plane entered a County's airspace without permission it would be ordered to land before it was shot down.",
">\n\nThey are gonna send an even bigger balloon this time!",
">\n\nHow’s your boy Russia doing?",
">\n\nChina started it, we finished it. If they wanted it back, they should have come get it (with permission, naturally).\nI am very curious now to see what the contents reveal.",
">\n\nThere is zero chance this statement was meant to be taken seriously",
">\n\nI’m sorry we violated your aerial surveillance balls",
">\n\nChina is not a military threat so their threats in that sense are empty.\nThey are, however, an economic threat and could wreak some havoc there if they so chose.",
">\n\nI never thought World War III would start from popping Chinas balloon. But it is a sensitive Pooh on the other side lol. Ironically like Pooh bear. 🤔"
] |
>
Are they trying to set a precedent for knocking down spy satellites.
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?",
">\n\nAfter the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous",
">\n\nOh China, go fuck yourself.",
">\n\nSo exciting, going to war over a hot air balloon",
">\n\nI think China wanted the US to down it right away so they could paint America as hysterical and trigger happy and violent. When that didn’t happen, it looks like they didn’t have a plan B, so just nonsensically went with the original narrative leaving everyone to scratch their heads. It’s like when they got themselves kicked out of the Nobel ceremony and had their own, or when trumps team mistakenly held a press conference in a lawn store.",
">\n\nWe hurt winnie the poohs feelings :(",
">\n\nI see a lot of posts about trump letting three balloons float around. I do not want to seem like a conspiracy theorist but here it goes. Trump if he is a Russia shill for Putin is also a shill for china it doesn't take that much brain power to make that connection being that both Russia and china work together often times. The tariffs against china during the trump administration were an intentional economic slight against the American public to weaken our economic ability to address an attack on either Ukraine or Taiwan. \nSpecifically toward our farm exports and imports but also largely steel and aluminum. This is a deflection of course in order to take the spot light off of Russian aggression and to hamstring our ability to be in a strong economic position this also on the heels of the pandemic which was not an expected factor of course but obliterated the global supply chain causing extreme economic strife. You could argue that it was intentional but that is wacky and far right bullshit. Now that the tariffs are out of the way we can then look at. The next piece which is the war in Ukraine. Trump committed to false election claims that inspired right wing nut jobs to storm the capitol and if successful would have prevented our government from not only transitioning a new presidency but could have made our government ineffective to move on Russia invading Ukraine and potentially China invading Taiwan being that they could transition imports and exports to a newly revitalized war machine in Russia that successful stormed Ukraine taking 16 percent of the maize and 10 percent of the global wheat. Enough to cause a myriad of problems for the united states and force them into a more insular posture because of the domestic issues at home coupled with such a large loss of exported crops from Ukraine. \nThere is a ton more to this i imagine. but then we get to the balloon fiasco. Trump allowed Three such balloons to go across the united states without a word. Why is that? ignorance? intention? likely the latter. Being unsure as to what these balloons were collecting or depositing we can imagine they could have been doing anything of significance. Now if we want to do some crazy shit we could say the avian bird flu seems to have come about with some serious audacity. Is it the balloons? maybe which is why they opted to shoot it down in the water and not over land. This is just one possibility with the balloons. Another is that they were monitoring something else. Which is the more likely scenario. I think someone needs to google maps the locations in which is was floating and we can really determine what this particular balloon was doing. Or maybe it is just a communications or weather balloon. Anything is possible in my mind. Everything I have written is likely not the case but it does seem like that is a lot more to this puzzle then we are seeing. We are getting lost in the trees and not seeing the forest sadly because it is a constant barrage of bullshit. \nAnyway, I think that Russia, China, Trump and others who follow him are seeking to undermine our government and sow chaos for both Russia and China. There are just too many connections that make sense and I have touched on Two maybe connections. I just wonder what the government is not telling us and how far a long they really are in dealing with these things.",
">\n\nNow that Republicans know that Trump allowed three Chinese CCP balloons pass across the US during his tenure, they will now start railing on Biden for daring China and possible war by blowing up the CCP balloon.",
">\n\nIn fairness, three times during the Trump administration, China sent a balloon over the US, to no response. It might seem reasonable that we've decided to ignore stuff that's inconvenient to deal with.",
">\n\nI completely understand china’s stance here. They should be able to surveil other countries with out repercussion because the obvious unspoken law of “China can do whatever it wants” wasn’t taken into account. Obviously if another country attempted to do the same i’m they couldn’t because of the other unspoken law of. “You’re not china”",
">\n\nFor shooting a balloon? Man this story is getting weirder and weirder. I'd have thought they just let this one go - what the duck is happening here. \nNext thing I know we're going to find out there was an alien involved and there's a secret organization called Xcom",
">\n\nAnd China flying a spy balloon over the U.S. isn’t “violation of international practice”. Fuck off",
">\n\ni swear the only group with thinner skin that US conservatives are the CCP.",
">\n\nChina, do us all a favor and fuck off. Your country is a god damn disaster right now. \n*How much of a disaster are they?\nChina’s so fucked up that they make the us congress look like a highly functional institution.",
">\n\nXi, go eat some honey and calm down, and for the love of God, put some pants on.",
">\n\nLet’s send a spy ballon into their territory and see what their response is. \nWe can call it a weather balloon as well.",
">\n\nOr a gender reveal party trick gone wrong",
">\n\nGive me a break. You violated the United States sovereignty and borders.",
">\n\nTheir response feels trumpian. How dare you shoot down our illegal spy balloons conducting illegal surveillance. That has to be illegal and we will hold you accountable for it...",
">\n\nSo they'd be fine with us sending surveillance balloons over China? \nFFS China, you can't be serious here.",
">\n\nFine China, next time one of our weather balloons enters your airspace, you get to shoot it down.",
">\n\nGo home china you’re drunk",
">\n\nChina thinks they have a right to our airspace? It’s a clear provocation.",
">\n\nRepercussions for shooting down what they claimed was a “weather balloon” that went off course? They must take their weather seriously in China.",
">\n\nChina should not intervene in other countries' internal affairs, as they themselves would say.,",
">\n\nBig whoop wanna fight about it China ?",
">\n\nOh cool so Xi woulda been cool with us sending a balloon over Beijing right?",
">\n\nIt’s funny that China says it was a private companies balloon. When there are no “private “ companies in China. They are all beholden to the CCP",
">\n\nWhina gonna whine",
">\n\nchina needs a firm dose of reality",
">\n\nThe US probably waited till the American people saw it. To make news and become public aware. The fact that china is saying shooting it down was wrong of the US, makes me want to slap them.. being in our air space uninvited is way worse.",
">\n\nYawn……..",
">\n\nbut we’ve been told by maga that Biden only did this because China signed off. So which is it",
">\n\nI'm curios if the Chinese were asked to land the balloon before it was shot down. They had plenty of time, if a plane entered a County's airspace without permission it would be ordered to land before it was shot down.",
">\n\nThey are gonna send an even bigger balloon this time!",
">\n\nHow’s your boy Russia doing?",
">\n\nChina started it, we finished it. If they wanted it back, they should have come get it (with permission, naturally).\nI am very curious now to see what the contents reveal.",
">\n\nThere is zero chance this statement was meant to be taken seriously",
">\n\nI’m sorry we violated your aerial surveillance balls",
">\n\nChina is not a military threat so their threats in that sense are empty.\nThey are, however, an economic threat and could wreak some havoc there if they so chose.",
">\n\nI never thought World War III would start from popping Chinas balloon. But it is a sensitive Pooh on the other side lol. Ironically like Pooh bear. 🤔",
">\n\nIntruding to anoyher country air space is against international law. Therefore, Chinese ballon commit the security breach first and now threaten and bully other countries!"
] |
>
Fcking whiners.
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?",
">\n\nAfter the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous",
">\n\nOh China, go fuck yourself.",
">\n\nSo exciting, going to war over a hot air balloon",
">\n\nI think China wanted the US to down it right away so they could paint America as hysterical and trigger happy and violent. When that didn’t happen, it looks like they didn’t have a plan B, so just nonsensically went with the original narrative leaving everyone to scratch their heads. It’s like when they got themselves kicked out of the Nobel ceremony and had their own, or when trumps team mistakenly held a press conference in a lawn store.",
">\n\nWe hurt winnie the poohs feelings :(",
">\n\nI see a lot of posts about trump letting three balloons float around. I do not want to seem like a conspiracy theorist but here it goes. Trump if he is a Russia shill for Putin is also a shill for china it doesn't take that much brain power to make that connection being that both Russia and china work together often times. The tariffs against china during the trump administration were an intentional economic slight against the American public to weaken our economic ability to address an attack on either Ukraine or Taiwan. \nSpecifically toward our farm exports and imports but also largely steel and aluminum. This is a deflection of course in order to take the spot light off of Russian aggression and to hamstring our ability to be in a strong economic position this also on the heels of the pandemic which was not an expected factor of course but obliterated the global supply chain causing extreme economic strife. You could argue that it was intentional but that is wacky and far right bullshit. Now that the tariffs are out of the way we can then look at. The next piece which is the war in Ukraine. Trump committed to false election claims that inspired right wing nut jobs to storm the capitol and if successful would have prevented our government from not only transitioning a new presidency but could have made our government ineffective to move on Russia invading Ukraine and potentially China invading Taiwan being that they could transition imports and exports to a newly revitalized war machine in Russia that successful stormed Ukraine taking 16 percent of the maize and 10 percent of the global wheat. Enough to cause a myriad of problems for the united states and force them into a more insular posture because of the domestic issues at home coupled with such a large loss of exported crops from Ukraine. \nThere is a ton more to this i imagine. but then we get to the balloon fiasco. Trump allowed Three such balloons to go across the united states without a word. Why is that? ignorance? intention? likely the latter. Being unsure as to what these balloons were collecting or depositing we can imagine they could have been doing anything of significance. Now if we want to do some crazy shit we could say the avian bird flu seems to have come about with some serious audacity. Is it the balloons? maybe which is why they opted to shoot it down in the water and not over land. This is just one possibility with the balloons. Another is that they were monitoring something else. Which is the more likely scenario. I think someone needs to google maps the locations in which is was floating and we can really determine what this particular balloon was doing. Or maybe it is just a communications or weather balloon. Anything is possible in my mind. Everything I have written is likely not the case but it does seem like that is a lot more to this puzzle then we are seeing. We are getting lost in the trees and not seeing the forest sadly because it is a constant barrage of bullshit. \nAnyway, I think that Russia, China, Trump and others who follow him are seeking to undermine our government and sow chaos for both Russia and China. There are just too many connections that make sense and I have touched on Two maybe connections. I just wonder what the government is not telling us and how far a long they really are in dealing with these things.",
">\n\nNow that Republicans know that Trump allowed three Chinese CCP balloons pass across the US during his tenure, they will now start railing on Biden for daring China and possible war by blowing up the CCP balloon.",
">\n\nIn fairness, three times during the Trump administration, China sent a balloon over the US, to no response. It might seem reasonable that we've decided to ignore stuff that's inconvenient to deal with.",
">\n\nI completely understand china’s stance here. They should be able to surveil other countries with out repercussion because the obvious unspoken law of “China can do whatever it wants” wasn’t taken into account. Obviously if another country attempted to do the same i’m they couldn’t because of the other unspoken law of. “You’re not china”",
">\n\nFor shooting a balloon? Man this story is getting weirder and weirder. I'd have thought they just let this one go - what the duck is happening here. \nNext thing I know we're going to find out there was an alien involved and there's a secret organization called Xcom",
">\n\nAnd China flying a spy balloon over the U.S. isn’t “violation of international practice”. Fuck off",
">\n\ni swear the only group with thinner skin that US conservatives are the CCP.",
">\n\nChina, do us all a favor and fuck off. Your country is a god damn disaster right now. \n*How much of a disaster are they?\nChina’s so fucked up that they make the us congress look like a highly functional institution.",
">\n\nXi, go eat some honey and calm down, and for the love of God, put some pants on.",
">\n\nLet’s send a spy ballon into their territory and see what their response is. \nWe can call it a weather balloon as well.",
">\n\nOr a gender reveal party trick gone wrong",
">\n\nGive me a break. You violated the United States sovereignty and borders.",
">\n\nTheir response feels trumpian. How dare you shoot down our illegal spy balloons conducting illegal surveillance. That has to be illegal and we will hold you accountable for it...",
">\n\nSo they'd be fine with us sending surveillance balloons over China? \nFFS China, you can't be serious here.",
">\n\nFine China, next time one of our weather balloons enters your airspace, you get to shoot it down.",
">\n\nGo home china you’re drunk",
">\n\nChina thinks they have a right to our airspace? It’s a clear provocation.",
">\n\nRepercussions for shooting down what they claimed was a “weather balloon” that went off course? They must take their weather seriously in China.",
">\n\nChina should not intervene in other countries' internal affairs, as they themselves would say.,",
">\n\nBig whoop wanna fight about it China ?",
">\n\nOh cool so Xi woulda been cool with us sending a balloon over Beijing right?",
">\n\nIt’s funny that China says it was a private companies balloon. When there are no “private “ companies in China. They are all beholden to the CCP",
">\n\nWhina gonna whine",
">\n\nchina needs a firm dose of reality",
">\n\nThe US probably waited till the American people saw it. To make news and become public aware. The fact that china is saying shooting it down was wrong of the US, makes me want to slap them.. being in our air space uninvited is way worse.",
">\n\nYawn……..",
">\n\nbut we’ve been told by maga that Biden only did this because China signed off. So which is it",
">\n\nI'm curios if the Chinese were asked to land the balloon before it was shot down. They had plenty of time, if a plane entered a County's airspace without permission it would be ordered to land before it was shot down.",
">\n\nThey are gonna send an even bigger balloon this time!",
">\n\nHow’s your boy Russia doing?",
">\n\nChina started it, we finished it. If they wanted it back, they should have come get it (with permission, naturally).\nI am very curious now to see what the contents reveal.",
">\n\nThere is zero chance this statement was meant to be taken seriously",
">\n\nI’m sorry we violated your aerial surveillance balls",
">\n\nChina is not a military threat so their threats in that sense are empty.\nThey are, however, an economic threat and could wreak some havoc there if they so chose.",
">\n\nI never thought World War III would start from popping Chinas balloon. But it is a sensitive Pooh on the other side lol. Ironically like Pooh bear. 🤔",
">\n\nIntruding to anoyher country air space is against international law. Therefore, Chinese ballon commit the security breach first and now threaten and bully other countries!",
">\n\nAre they trying to set a precedent for knocking down spy satellites."
] |
>
What does China do to our weather balloons?
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?",
">\n\nAfter the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous",
">\n\nOh China, go fuck yourself.",
">\n\nSo exciting, going to war over a hot air balloon",
">\n\nI think China wanted the US to down it right away so they could paint America as hysterical and trigger happy and violent. When that didn’t happen, it looks like they didn’t have a plan B, so just nonsensically went with the original narrative leaving everyone to scratch their heads. It’s like when they got themselves kicked out of the Nobel ceremony and had their own, or when trumps team mistakenly held a press conference in a lawn store.",
">\n\nWe hurt winnie the poohs feelings :(",
">\n\nI see a lot of posts about trump letting three balloons float around. I do not want to seem like a conspiracy theorist but here it goes. Trump if he is a Russia shill for Putin is also a shill for china it doesn't take that much brain power to make that connection being that both Russia and china work together often times. The tariffs against china during the trump administration were an intentional economic slight against the American public to weaken our economic ability to address an attack on either Ukraine or Taiwan. \nSpecifically toward our farm exports and imports but also largely steel and aluminum. This is a deflection of course in order to take the spot light off of Russian aggression and to hamstring our ability to be in a strong economic position this also on the heels of the pandemic which was not an expected factor of course but obliterated the global supply chain causing extreme economic strife. You could argue that it was intentional but that is wacky and far right bullshit. Now that the tariffs are out of the way we can then look at. The next piece which is the war in Ukraine. Trump committed to false election claims that inspired right wing nut jobs to storm the capitol and if successful would have prevented our government from not only transitioning a new presidency but could have made our government ineffective to move on Russia invading Ukraine and potentially China invading Taiwan being that they could transition imports and exports to a newly revitalized war machine in Russia that successful stormed Ukraine taking 16 percent of the maize and 10 percent of the global wheat. Enough to cause a myriad of problems for the united states and force them into a more insular posture because of the domestic issues at home coupled with such a large loss of exported crops from Ukraine. \nThere is a ton more to this i imagine. but then we get to the balloon fiasco. Trump allowed Three such balloons to go across the united states without a word. Why is that? ignorance? intention? likely the latter. Being unsure as to what these balloons were collecting or depositing we can imagine they could have been doing anything of significance. Now if we want to do some crazy shit we could say the avian bird flu seems to have come about with some serious audacity. Is it the balloons? maybe which is why they opted to shoot it down in the water and not over land. This is just one possibility with the balloons. Another is that they were monitoring something else. Which is the more likely scenario. I think someone needs to google maps the locations in which is was floating and we can really determine what this particular balloon was doing. Or maybe it is just a communications or weather balloon. Anything is possible in my mind. Everything I have written is likely not the case but it does seem like that is a lot more to this puzzle then we are seeing. We are getting lost in the trees and not seeing the forest sadly because it is a constant barrage of bullshit. \nAnyway, I think that Russia, China, Trump and others who follow him are seeking to undermine our government and sow chaos for both Russia and China. There are just too many connections that make sense and I have touched on Two maybe connections. I just wonder what the government is not telling us and how far a long they really are in dealing with these things.",
">\n\nNow that Republicans know that Trump allowed three Chinese CCP balloons pass across the US during his tenure, they will now start railing on Biden for daring China and possible war by blowing up the CCP balloon.",
">\n\nIn fairness, three times during the Trump administration, China sent a balloon over the US, to no response. It might seem reasonable that we've decided to ignore stuff that's inconvenient to deal with.",
">\n\nI completely understand china’s stance here. They should be able to surveil other countries with out repercussion because the obvious unspoken law of “China can do whatever it wants” wasn’t taken into account. Obviously if another country attempted to do the same i’m they couldn’t because of the other unspoken law of. “You’re not china”",
">\n\nFor shooting a balloon? Man this story is getting weirder and weirder. I'd have thought they just let this one go - what the duck is happening here. \nNext thing I know we're going to find out there was an alien involved and there's a secret organization called Xcom",
">\n\nAnd China flying a spy balloon over the U.S. isn’t “violation of international practice”. Fuck off",
">\n\ni swear the only group with thinner skin that US conservatives are the CCP.",
">\n\nChina, do us all a favor and fuck off. Your country is a god damn disaster right now. \n*How much of a disaster are they?\nChina’s so fucked up that they make the us congress look like a highly functional institution.",
">\n\nXi, go eat some honey and calm down, and for the love of God, put some pants on.",
">\n\nLet’s send a spy ballon into their territory and see what their response is. \nWe can call it a weather balloon as well.",
">\n\nOr a gender reveal party trick gone wrong",
">\n\nGive me a break. You violated the United States sovereignty and borders.",
">\n\nTheir response feels trumpian. How dare you shoot down our illegal spy balloons conducting illegal surveillance. That has to be illegal and we will hold you accountable for it...",
">\n\nSo they'd be fine with us sending surveillance balloons over China? \nFFS China, you can't be serious here.",
">\n\nFine China, next time one of our weather balloons enters your airspace, you get to shoot it down.",
">\n\nGo home china you’re drunk",
">\n\nChina thinks they have a right to our airspace? It’s a clear provocation.",
">\n\nRepercussions for shooting down what they claimed was a “weather balloon” that went off course? They must take their weather seriously in China.",
">\n\nChina should not intervene in other countries' internal affairs, as they themselves would say.,",
">\n\nBig whoop wanna fight about it China ?",
">\n\nOh cool so Xi woulda been cool with us sending a balloon over Beijing right?",
">\n\nIt’s funny that China says it was a private companies balloon. When there are no “private “ companies in China. They are all beholden to the CCP",
">\n\nWhina gonna whine",
">\n\nchina needs a firm dose of reality",
">\n\nThe US probably waited till the American people saw it. To make news and become public aware. The fact that china is saying shooting it down was wrong of the US, makes me want to slap them.. being in our air space uninvited is way worse.",
">\n\nYawn……..",
">\n\nbut we’ve been told by maga that Biden only did this because China signed off. So which is it",
">\n\nI'm curios if the Chinese were asked to land the balloon before it was shot down. They had plenty of time, if a plane entered a County's airspace without permission it would be ordered to land before it was shot down.",
">\n\nThey are gonna send an even bigger balloon this time!",
">\n\nHow’s your boy Russia doing?",
">\n\nChina started it, we finished it. If they wanted it back, they should have come get it (with permission, naturally).\nI am very curious now to see what the contents reveal.",
">\n\nThere is zero chance this statement was meant to be taken seriously",
">\n\nI’m sorry we violated your aerial surveillance balls",
">\n\nChina is not a military threat so their threats in that sense are empty.\nThey are, however, an economic threat and could wreak some havoc there if they so chose.",
">\n\nI never thought World War III would start from popping Chinas balloon. But it is a sensitive Pooh on the other side lol. Ironically like Pooh bear. 🤔",
">\n\nIntruding to anoyher country air space is against international law. Therefore, Chinese ballon commit the security breach first and now threaten and bully other countries!",
">\n\nAre they trying to set a precedent for knocking down spy satellites.",
">\n\nFcking whiners."
] |
>
China's final warning strikes again
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?",
">\n\nAfter the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous",
">\n\nOh China, go fuck yourself.",
">\n\nSo exciting, going to war over a hot air balloon",
">\n\nI think China wanted the US to down it right away so they could paint America as hysterical and trigger happy and violent. When that didn’t happen, it looks like they didn’t have a plan B, so just nonsensically went with the original narrative leaving everyone to scratch their heads. It’s like when they got themselves kicked out of the Nobel ceremony and had their own, or when trumps team mistakenly held a press conference in a lawn store.",
">\n\nWe hurt winnie the poohs feelings :(",
">\n\nI see a lot of posts about trump letting three balloons float around. I do not want to seem like a conspiracy theorist but here it goes. Trump if he is a Russia shill for Putin is also a shill for china it doesn't take that much brain power to make that connection being that both Russia and china work together often times. The tariffs against china during the trump administration were an intentional economic slight against the American public to weaken our economic ability to address an attack on either Ukraine or Taiwan. \nSpecifically toward our farm exports and imports but also largely steel and aluminum. This is a deflection of course in order to take the spot light off of Russian aggression and to hamstring our ability to be in a strong economic position this also on the heels of the pandemic which was not an expected factor of course but obliterated the global supply chain causing extreme economic strife. You could argue that it was intentional but that is wacky and far right bullshit. Now that the tariffs are out of the way we can then look at. The next piece which is the war in Ukraine. Trump committed to false election claims that inspired right wing nut jobs to storm the capitol and if successful would have prevented our government from not only transitioning a new presidency but could have made our government ineffective to move on Russia invading Ukraine and potentially China invading Taiwan being that they could transition imports and exports to a newly revitalized war machine in Russia that successful stormed Ukraine taking 16 percent of the maize and 10 percent of the global wheat. Enough to cause a myriad of problems for the united states and force them into a more insular posture because of the domestic issues at home coupled with such a large loss of exported crops from Ukraine. \nThere is a ton more to this i imagine. but then we get to the balloon fiasco. Trump allowed Three such balloons to go across the united states without a word. Why is that? ignorance? intention? likely the latter. Being unsure as to what these balloons were collecting or depositing we can imagine they could have been doing anything of significance. Now if we want to do some crazy shit we could say the avian bird flu seems to have come about with some serious audacity. Is it the balloons? maybe which is why they opted to shoot it down in the water and not over land. This is just one possibility with the balloons. Another is that they were monitoring something else. Which is the more likely scenario. I think someone needs to google maps the locations in which is was floating and we can really determine what this particular balloon was doing. Or maybe it is just a communications or weather balloon. Anything is possible in my mind. Everything I have written is likely not the case but it does seem like that is a lot more to this puzzle then we are seeing. We are getting lost in the trees and not seeing the forest sadly because it is a constant barrage of bullshit. \nAnyway, I think that Russia, China, Trump and others who follow him are seeking to undermine our government and sow chaos for both Russia and China. There are just too many connections that make sense and I have touched on Two maybe connections. I just wonder what the government is not telling us and how far a long they really are in dealing with these things.",
">\n\nNow that Republicans know that Trump allowed three Chinese CCP balloons pass across the US during his tenure, they will now start railing on Biden for daring China and possible war by blowing up the CCP balloon.",
">\n\nIn fairness, three times during the Trump administration, China sent a balloon over the US, to no response. It might seem reasonable that we've decided to ignore stuff that's inconvenient to deal with.",
">\n\nI completely understand china’s stance here. They should be able to surveil other countries with out repercussion because the obvious unspoken law of “China can do whatever it wants” wasn’t taken into account. Obviously if another country attempted to do the same i’m they couldn’t because of the other unspoken law of. “You’re not china”",
">\n\nFor shooting a balloon? Man this story is getting weirder and weirder. I'd have thought they just let this one go - what the duck is happening here. \nNext thing I know we're going to find out there was an alien involved and there's a secret organization called Xcom",
">\n\nAnd China flying a spy balloon over the U.S. isn’t “violation of international practice”. Fuck off",
">\n\ni swear the only group with thinner skin that US conservatives are the CCP.",
">\n\nChina, do us all a favor and fuck off. Your country is a god damn disaster right now. \n*How much of a disaster are they?\nChina’s so fucked up that they make the us congress look like a highly functional institution.",
">\n\nXi, go eat some honey and calm down, and for the love of God, put some pants on.",
">\n\nLet’s send a spy ballon into their territory and see what their response is. \nWe can call it a weather balloon as well.",
">\n\nOr a gender reveal party trick gone wrong",
">\n\nGive me a break. You violated the United States sovereignty and borders.",
">\n\nTheir response feels trumpian. How dare you shoot down our illegal spy balloons conducting illegal surveillance. That has to be illegal and we will hold you accountable for it...",
">\n\nSo they'd be fine with us sending surveillance balloons over China? \nFFS China, you can't be serious here.",
">\n\nFine China, next time one of our weather balloons enters your airspace, you get to shoot it down.",
">\n\nGo home china you’re drunk",
">\n\nChina thinks they have a right to our airspace? It’s a clear provocation.",
">\n\nRepercussions for shooting down what they claimed was a “weather balloon” that went off course? They must take their weather seriously in China.",
">\n\nChina should not intervene in other countries' internal affairs, as they themselves would say.,",
">\n\nBig whoop wanna fight about it China ?",
">\n\nOh cool so Xi woulda been cool with us sending a balloon over Beijing right?",
">\n\nIt’s funny that China says it was a private companies balloon. When there are no “private “ companies in China. They are all beholden to the CCP",
">\n\nWhina gonna whine",
">\n\nchina needs a firm dose of reality",
">\n\nThe US probably waited till the American people saw it. To make news and become public aware. The fact that china is saying shooting it down was wrong of the US, makes me want to slap them.. being in our air space uninvited is way worse.",
">\n\nYawn……..",
">\n\nbut we’ve been told by maga that Biden only did this because China signed off. So which is it",
">\n\nI'm curios if the Chinese were asked to land the balloon before it was shot down. They had plenty of time, if a plane entered a County's airspace without permission it would be ordered to land before it was shot down.",
">\n\nThey are gonna send an even bigger balloon this time!",
">\n\nHow’s your boy Russia doing?",
">\n\nChina started it, we finished it. If they wanted it back, they should have come get it (with permission, naturally).\nI am very curious now to see what the contents reveal.",
">\n\nThere is zero chance this statement was meant to be taken seriously",
">\n\nI’m sorry we violated your aerial surveillance balls",
">\n\nChina is not a military threat so their threats in that sense are empty.\nThey are, however, an economic threat and could wreak some havoc there if they so chose.",
">\n\nI never thought World War III would start from popping Chinas balloon. But it is a sensitive Pooh on the other side lol. Ironically like Pooh bear. 🤔",
">\n\nIntruding to anoyher country air space is against international law. Therefore, Chinese ballon commit the security breach first and now threaten and bully other countries!",
">\n\nAre they trying to set a precedent for knocking down spy satellites.",
">\n\nFcking whiners.",
">\n\nWhat does China do to our weather balloons?"
] |
>
They are faking outrage.
The balloon's spy mission was already complete.
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?",
">\n\nAfter the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous",
">\n\nOh China, go fuck yourself.",
">\n\nSo exciting, going to war over a hot air balloon",
">\n\nI think China wanted the US to down it right away so they could paint America as hysterical and trigger happy and violent. When that didn’t happen, it looks like they didn’t have a plan B, so just nonsensically went with the original narrative leaving everyone to scratch their heads. It’s like when they got themselves kicked out of the Nobel ceremony and had their own, or when trumps team mistakenly held a press conference in a lawn store.",
">\n\nWe hurt winnie the poohs feelings :(",
">\n\nI see a lot of posts about trump letting three balloons float around. I do not want to seem like a conspiracy theorist but here it goes. Trump if he is a Russia shill for Putin is also a shill for china it doesn't take that much brain power to make that connection being that both Russia and china work together often times. The tariffs against china during the trump administration were an intentional economic slight against the American public to weaken our economic ability to address an attack on either Ukraine or Taiwan. \nSpecifically toward our farm exports and imports but also largely steel and aluminum. This is a deflection of course in order to take the spot light off of Russian aggression and to hamstring our ability to be in a strong economic position this also on the heels of the pandemic which was not an expected factor of course but obliterated the global supply chain causing extreme economic strife. You could argue that it was intentional but that is wacky and far right bullshit. Now that the tariffs are out of the way we can then look at. The next piece which is the war in Ukraine. Trump committed to false election claims that inspired right wing nut jobs to storm the capitol and if successful would have prevented our government from not only transitioning a new presidency but could have made our government ineffective to move on Russia invading Ukraine and potentially China invading Taiwan being that they could transition imports and exports to a newly revitalized war machine in Russia that successful stormed Ukraine taking 16 percent of the maize and 10 percent of the global wheat. Enough to cause a myriad of problems for the united states and force them into a more insular posture because of the domestic issues at home coupled with such a large loss of exported crops from Ukraine. \nThere is a ton more to this i imagine. but then we get to the balloon fiasco. Trump allowed Three such balloons to go across the united states without a word. Why is that? ignorance? intention? likely the latter. Being unsure as to what these balloons were collecting or depositing we can imagine they could have been doing anything of significance. Now if we want to do some crazy shit we could say the avian bird flu seems to have come about with some serious audacity. Is it the balloons? maybe which is why they opted to shoot it down in the water and not over land. This is just one possibility with the balloons. Another is that they were monitoring something else. Which is the more likely scenario. I think someone needs to google maps the locations in which is was floating and we can really determine what this particular balloon was doing. Or maybe it is just a communications or weather balloon. Anything is possible in my mind. Everything I have written is likely not the case but it does seem like that is a lot more to this puzzle then we are seeing. We are getting lost in the trees and not seeing the forest sadly because it is a constant barrage of bullshit. \nAnyway, I think that Russia, China, Trump and others who follow him are seeking to undermine our government and sow chaos for both Russia and China. There are just too many connections that make sense and I have touched on Two maybe connections. I just wonder what the government is not telling us and how far a long they really are in dealing with these things.",
">\n\nNow that Republicans know that Trump allowed three Chinese CCP balloons pass across the US during his tenure, they will now start railing on Biden for daring China and possible war by blowing up the CCP balloon.",
">\n\nIn fairness, three times during the Trump administration, China sent a balloon over the US, to no response. It might seem reasonable that we've decided to ignore stuff that's inconvenient to deal with.",
">\n\nI completely understand china’s stance here. They should be able to surveil other countries with out repercussion because the obvious unspoken law of “China can do whatever it wants” wasn’t taken into account. Obviously if another country attempted to do the same i’m they couldn’t because of the other unspoken law of. “You’re not china”",
">\n\nFor shooting a balloon? Man this story is getting weirder and weirder. I'd have thought they just let this one go - what the duck is happening here. \nNext thing I know we're going to find out there was an alien involved and there's a secret organization called Xcom",
">\n\nAnd China flying a spy balloon over the U.S. isn’t “violation of international practice”. Fuck off",
">\n\ni swear the only group with thinner skin that US conservatives are the CCP.",
">\n\nChina, do us all a favor and fuck off. Your country is a god damn disaster right now. \n*How much of a disaster are they?\nChina’s so fucked up that they make the us congress look like a highly functional institution.",
">\n\nXi, go eat some honey and calm down, and for the love of God, put some pants on.",
">\n\nLet’s send a spy ballon into their territory and see what their response is. \nWe can call it a weather balloon as well.",
">\n\nOr a gender reveal party trick gone wrong",
">\n\nGive me a break. You violated the United States sovereignty and borders.",
">\n\nTheir response feels trumpian. How dare you shoot down our illegal spy balloons conducting illegal surveillance. That has to be illegal and we will hold you accountable for it...",
">\n\nSo they'd be fine with us sending surveillance balloons over China? \nFFS China, you can't be serious here.",
">\n\nFine China, next time one of our weather balloons enters your airspace, you get to shoot it down.",
">\n\nGo home china you’re drunk",
">\n\nChina thinks they have a right to our airspace? It’s a clear provocation.",
">\n\nRepercussions for shooting down what they claimed was a “weather balloon” that went off course? They must take their weather seriously in China.",
">\n\nChina should not intervene in other countries' internal affairs, as they themselves would say.,",
">\n\nBig whoop wanna fight about it China ?",
">\n\nOh cool so Xi woulda been cool with us sending a balloon over Beijing right?",
">\n\nIt’s funny that China says it was a private companies balloon. When there are no “private “ companies in China. They are all beholden to the CCP",
">\n\nWhina gonna whine",
">\n\nchina needs a firm dose of reality",
">\n\nThe US probably waited till the American people saw it. To make news and become public aware. The fact that china is saying shooting it down was wrong of the US, makes me want to slap them.. being in our air space uninvited is way worse.",
">\n\nYawn……..",
">\n\nbut we’ve been told by maga that Biden only did this because China signed off. So which is it",
">\n\nI'm curios if the Chinese were asked to land the balloon before it was shot down. They had plenty of time, if a plane entered a County's airspace without permission it would be ordered to land before it was shot down.",
">\n\nThey are gonna send an even bigger balloon this time!",
">\n\nHow’s your boy Russia doing?",
">\n\nChina started it, we finished it. If they wanted it back, they should have come get it (with permission, naturally).\nI am very curious now to see what the contents reveal.",
">\n\nThere is zero chance this statement was meant to be taken seriously",
">\n\nI’m sorry we violated your aerial surveillance balls",
">\n\nChina is not a military threat so their threats in that sense are empty.\nThey are, however, an economic threat and could wreak some havoc there if they so chose.",
">\n\nI never thought World War III would start from popping Chinas balloon. But it is a sensitive Pooh on the other side lol. Ironically like Pooh bear. 🤔",
">\n\nIntruding to anoyher country air space is against international law. Therefore, Chinese ballon commit the security breach first and now threaten and bully other countries!",
">\n\nAre they trying to set a precedent for knocking down spy satellites.",
">\n\nFcking whiners.",
">\n\nWhat does China do to our weather balloons?",
">\n\nChina's final warning strikes again"
] |
>
Didn’t they previously say it wasn’t theirs? 😂
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?",
">\n\nAfter the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous",
">\n\nOh China, go fuck yourself.",
">\n\nSo exciting, going to war over a hot air balloon",
">\n\nI think China wanted the US to down it right away so they could paint America as hysterical and trigger happy and violent. When that didn’t happen, it looks like they didn’t have a plan B, so just nonsensically went with the original narrative leaving everyone to scratch their heads. It’s like when they got themselves kicked out of the Nobel ceremony and had their own, or when trumps team mistakenly held a press conference in a lawn store.",
">\n\nWe hurt winnie the poohs feelings :(",
">\n\nI see a lot of posts about trump letting three balloons float around. I do not want to seem like a conspiracy theorist but here it goes. Trump if he is a Russia shill for Putin is also a shill for china it doesn't take that much brain power to make that connection being that both Russia and china work together often times. The tariffs against china during the trump administration were an intentional economic slight against the American public to weaken our economic ability to address an attack on either Ukraine or Taiwan. \nSpecifically toward our farm exports and imports but also largely steel and aluminum. This is a deflection of course in order to take the spot light off of Russian aggression and to hamstring our ability to be in a strong economic position this also on the heels of the pandemic which was not an expected factor of course but obliterated the global supply chain causing extreme economic strife. You could argue that it was intentional but that is wacky and far right bullshit. Now that the tariffs are out of the way we can then look at. The next piece which is the war in Ukraine. Trump committed to false election claims that inspired right wing nut jobs to storm the capitol and if successful would have prevented our government from not only transitioning a new presidency but could have made our government ineffective to move on Russia invading Ukraine and potentially China invading Taiwan being that they could transition imports and exports to a newly revitalized war machine in Russia that successful stormed Ukraine taking 16 percent of the maize and 10 percent of the global wheat. Enough to cause a myriad of problems for the united states and force them into a more insular posture because of the domestic issues at home coupled with such a large loss of exported crops from Ukraine. \nThere is a ton more to this i imagine. but then we get to the balloon fiasco. Trump allowed Three such balloons to go across the united states without a word. Why is that? ignorance? intention? likely the latter. Being unsure as to what these balloons were collecting or depositing we can imagine they could have been doing anything of significance. Now if we want to do some crazy shit we could say the avian bird flu seems to have come about with some serious audacity. Is it the balloons? maybe which is why they opted to shoot it down in the water and not over land. This is just one possibility with the balloons. Another is that they were monitoring something else. Which is the more likely scenario. I think someone needs to google maps the locations in which is was floating and we can really determine what this particular balloon was doing. Or maybe it is just a communications or weather balloon. Anything is possible in my mind. Everything I have written is likely not the case but it does seem like that is a lot more to this puzzle then we are seeing. We are getting lost in the trees and not seeing the forest sadly because it is a constant barrage of bullshit. \nAnyway, I think that Russia, China, Trump and others who follow him are seeking to undermine our government and sow chaos for both Russia and China. There are just too many connections that make sense and I have touched on Two maybe connections. I just wonder what the government is not telling us and how far a long they really are in dealing with these things.",
">\n\nNow that Republicans know that Trump allowed three Chinese CCP balloons pass across the US during his tenure, they will now start railing on Biden for daring China and possible war by blowing up the CCP balloon.",
">\n\nIn fairness, three times during the Trump administration, China sent a balloon over the US, to no response. It might seem reasonable that we've decided to ignore stuff that's inconvenient to deal with.",
">\n\nI completely understand china’s stance here. They should be able to surveil other countries with out repercussion because the obvious unspoken law of “China can do whatever it wants” wasn’t taken into account. Obviously if another country attempted to do the same i’m they couldn’t because of the other unspoken law of. “You’re not china”",
">\n\nFor shooting a balloon? Man this story is getting weirder and weirder. I'd have thought they just let this one go - what the duck is happening here. \nNext thing I know we're going to find out there was an alien involved and there's a secret organization called Xcom",
">\n\nAnd China flying a spy balloon over the U.S. isn’t “violation of international practice”. Fuck off",
">\n\ni swear the only group with thinner skin that US conservatives are the CCP.",
">\n\nChina, do us all a favor and fuck off. Your country is a god damn disaster right now. \n*How much of a disaster are they?\nChina’s so fucked up that they make the us congress look like a highly functional institution.",
">\n\nXi, go eat some honey and calm down, and for the love of God, put some pants on.",
">\n\nLet’s send a spy ballon into their territory and see what their response is. \nWe can call it a weather balloon as well.",
">\n\nOr a gender reveal party trick gone wrong",
">\n\nGive me a break. You violated the United States sovereignty and borders.",
">\n\nTheir response feels trumpian. How dare you shoot down our illegal spy balloons conducting illegal surveillance. That has to be illegal and we will hold you accountable for it...",
">\n\nSo they'd be fine with us sending surveillance balloons over China? \nFFS China, you can't be serious here.",
">\n\nFine China, next time one of our weather balloons enters your airspace, you get to shoot it down.",
">\n\nGo home china you’re drunk",
">\n\nChina thinks they have a right to our airspace? It’s a clear provocation.",
">\n\nRepercussions for shooting down what they claimed was a “weather balloon” that went off course? They must take their weather seriously in China.",
">\n\nChina should not intervene in other countries' internal affairs, as they themselves would say.,",
">\n\nBig whoop wanna fight about it China ?",
">\n\nOh cool so Xi woulda been cool with us sending a balloon over Beijing right?",
">\n\nIt’s funny that China says it was a private companies balloon. When there are no “private “ companies in China. They are all beholden to the CCP",
">\n\nWhina gonna whine",
">\n\nchina needs a firm dose of reality",
">\n\nThe US probably waited till the American people saw it. To make news and become public aware. The fact that china is saying shooting it down was wrong of the US, makes me want to slap them.. being in our air space uninvited is way worse.",
">\n\nYawn……..",
">\n\nbut we’ve been told by maga that Biden only did this because China signed off. So which is it",
">\n\nI'm curios if the Chinese were asked to land the balloon before it was shot down. They had plenty of time, if a plane entered a County's airspace without permission it would be ordered to land before it was shot down.",
">\n\nThey are gonna send an even bigger balloon this time!",
">\n\nHow’s your boy Russia doing?",
">\n\nChina started it, we finished it. If they wanted it back, they should have come get it (with permission, naturally).\nI am very curious now to see what the contents reveal.",
">\n\nThere is zero chance this statement was meant to be taken seriously",
">\n\nI’m sorry we violated your aerial surveillance balls",
">\n\nChina is not a military threat so their threats in that sense are empty.\nThey are, however, an economic threat and could wreak some havoc there if they so chose.",
">\n\nI never thought World War III would start from popping Chinas balloon. But it is a sensitive Pooh on the other side lol. Ironically like Pooh bear. 🤔",
">\n\nIntruding to anoyher country air space is against international law. Therefore, Chinese ballon commit the security breach first and now threaten and bully other countries!",
">\n\nAre they trying to set a precedent for knocking down spy satellites.",
">\n\nFcking whiners.",
">\n\nWhat does China do to our weather balloons?",
">\n\nChina's final warning strikes again",
">\n\nThey are faking outrage. \nThe balloon's spy mission was already complete."
] |
>
Hows that South China Sea extension going for ya ? Not a serious violation of international practice ?
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?",
">\n\nAfter the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous",
">\n\nOh China, go fuck yourself.",
">\n\nSo exciting, going to war over a hot air balloon",
">\n\nI think China wanted the US to down it right away so they could paint America as hysterical and trigger happy and violent. When that didn’t happen, it looks like they didn’t have a plan B, so just nonsensically went with the original narrative leaving everyone to scratch their heads. It’s like when they got themselves kicked out of the Nobel ceremony and had their own, or when trumps team mistakenly held a press conference in a lawn store.",
">\n\nWe hurt winnie the poohs feelings :(",
">\n\nI see a lot of posts about trump letting three balloons float around. I do not want to seem like a conspiracy theorist but here it goes. Trump if he is a Russia shill for Putin is also a shill for china it doesn't take that much brain power to make that connection being that both Russia and china work together often times. The tariffs against china during the trump administration were an intentional economic slight against the American public to weaken our economic ability to address an attack on either Ukraine or Taiwan. \nSpecifically toward our farm exports and imports but also largely steel and aluminum. This is a deflection of course in order to take the spot light off of Russian aggression and to hamstring our ability to be in a strong economic position this also on the heels of the pandemic which was not an expected factor of course but obliterated the global supply chain causing extreme economic strife. You could argue that it was intentional but that is wacky and far right bullshit. Now that the tariffs are out of the way we can then look at. The next piece which is the war in Ukraine. Trump committed to false election claims that inspired right wing nut jobs to storm the capitol and if successful would have prevented our government from not only transitioning a new presidency but could have made our government ineffective to move on Russia invading Ukraine and potentially China invading Taiwan being that they could transition imports and exports to a newly revitalized war machine in Russia that successful stormed Ukraine taking 16 percent of the maize and 10 percent of the global wheat. Enough to cause a myriad of problems for the united states and force them into a more insular posture because of the domestic issues at home coupled with such a large loss of exported crops from Ukraine. \nThere is a ton more to this i imagine. but then we get to the balloon fiasco. Trump allowed Three such balloons to go across the united states without a word. Why is that? ignorance? intention? likely the latter. Being unsure as to what these balloons were collecting or depositing we can imagine they could have been doing anything of significance. Now if we want to do some crazy shit we could say the avian bird flu seems to have come about with some serious audacity. Is it the balloons? maybe which is why they opted to shoot it down in the water and not over land. This is just one possibility with the balloons. Another is that they were monitoring something else. Which is the more likely scenario. I think someone needs to google maps the locations in which is was floating and we can really determine what this particular balloon was doing. Or maybe it is just a communications or weather balloon. Anything is possible in my mind. Everything I have written is likely not the case but it does seem like that is a lot more to this puzzle then we are seeing. We are getting lost in the trees and not seeing the forest sadly because it is a constant barrage of bullshit. \nAnyway, I think that Russia, China, Trump and others who follow him are seeking to undermine our government and sow chaos for both Russia and China. There are just too many connections that make sense and I have touched on Two maybe connections. I just wonder what the government is not telling us and how far a long they really are in dealing with these things.",
">\n\nNow that Republicans know that Trump allowed three Chinese CCP balloons pass across the US during his tenure, they will now start railing on Biden for daring China and possible war by blowing up the CCP balloon.",
">\n\nIn fairness, three times during the Trump administration, China sent a balloon over the US, to no response. It might seem reasonable that we've decided to ignore stuff that's inconvenient to deal with.",
">\n\nI completely understand china’s stance here. They should be able to surveil other countries with out repercussion because the obvious unspoken law of “China can do whatever it wants” wasn’t taken into account. Obviously if another country attempted to do the same i’m they couldn’t because of the other unspoken law of. “You’re not china”",
">\n\nFor shooting a balloon? Man this story is getting weirder and weirder. I'd have thought they just let this one go - what the duck is happening here. \nNext thing I know we're going to find out there was an alien involved and there's a secret organization called Xcom",
">\n\nAnd China flying a spy balloon over the U.S. isn’t “violation of international practice”. Fuck off",
">\n\ni swear the only group with thinner skin that US conservatives are the CCP.",
">\n\nChina, do us all a favor and fuck off. Your country is a god damn disaster right now. \n*How much of a disaster are they?\nChina’s so fucked up that they make the us congress look like a highly functional institution.",
">\n\nXi, go eat some honey and calm down, and for the love of God, put some pants on.",
">\n\nLet’s send a spy ballon into their territory and see what their response is. \nWe can call it a weather balloon as well.",
">\n\nOr a gender reveal party trick gone wrong",
">\n\nGive me a break. You violated the United States sovereignty and borders.",
">\n\nTheir response feels trumpian. How dare you shoot down our illegal spy balloons conducting illegal surveillance. That has to be illegal and we will hold you accountable for it...",
">\n\nSo they'd be fine with us sending surveillance balloons over China? \nFFS China, you can't be serious here.",
">\n\nFine China, next time one of our weather balloons enters your airspace, you get to shoot it down.",
">\n\nGo home china you’re drunk",
">\n\nChina thinks they have a right to our airspace? It’s a clear provocation.",
">\n\nRepercussions for shooting down what they claimed was a “weather balloon” that went off course? They must take their weather seriously in China.",
">\n\nChina should not intervene in other countries' internal affairs, as they themselves would say.,",
">\n\nBig whoop wanna fight about it China ?",
">\n\nOh cool so Xi woulda been cool with us sending a balloon over Beijing right?",
">\n\nIt’s funny that China says it was a private companies balloon. When there are no “private “ companies in China. They are all beholden to the CCP",
">\n\nWhina gonna whine",
">\n\nchina needs a firm dose of reality",
">\n\nThe US probably waited till the American people saw it. To make news and become public aware. The fact that china is saying shooting it down was wrong of the US, makes me want to slap them.. being in our air space uninvited is way worse.",
">\n\nYawn……..",
">\n\nbut we’ve been told by maga that Biden only did this because China signed off. So which is it",
">\n\nI'm curios if the Chinese were asked to land the balloon before it was shot down. They had plenty of time, if a plane entered a County's airspace without permission it would be ordered to land before it was shot down.",
">\n\nThey are gonna send an even bigger balloon this time!",
">\n\nHow’s your boy Russia doing?",
">\n\nChina started it, we finished it. If they wanted it back, they should have come get it (with permission, naturally).\nI am very curious now to see what the contents reveal.",
">\n\nThere is zero chance this statement was meant to be taken seriously",
">\n\nI’m sorry we violated your aerial surveillance balls",
">\n\nChina is not a military threat so their threats in that sense are empty.\nThey are, however, an economic threat and could wreak some havoc there if they so chose.",
">\n\nI never thought World War III would start from popping Chinas balloon. But it is a sensitive Pooh on the other side lol. Ironically like Pooh bear. 🤔",
">\n\nIntruding to anoyher country air space is against international law. Therefore, Chinese ballon commit the security breach first and now threaten and bully other countries!",
">\n\nAre they trying to set a precedent for knocking down spy satellites.",
">\n\nFcking whiners.",
">\n\nWhat does China do to our weather balloons?",
">\n\nChina's final warning strikes again",
">\n\nThey are faking outrage. \nThe balloon's spy mission was already complete.",
">\n\nDidn’t they previously say it wasn’t theirs? 😂"
] |
>
Like all very powerful states, the leadership believes laws and customs are for other people.
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?",
">\n\nAfter the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous",
">\n\nOh China, go fuck yourself.",
">\n\nSo exciting, going to war over a hot air balloon",
">\n\nI think China wanted the US to down it right away so they could paint America as hysterical and trigger happy and violent. When that didn’t happen, it looks like they didn’t have a plan B, so just nonsensically went with the original narrative leaving everyone to scratch their heads. It’s like when they got themselves kicked out of the Nobel ceremony and had their own, or when trumps team mistakenly held a press conference in a lawn store.",
">\n\nWe hurt winnie the poohs feelings :(",
">\n\nI see a lot of posts about trump letting three balloons float around. I do not want to seem like a conspiracy theorist but here it goes. Trump if he is a Russia shill for Putin is also a shill for china it doesn't take that much brain power to make that connection being that both Russia and china work together often times. The tariffs against china during the trump administration were an intentional economic slight against the American public to weaken our economic ability to address an attack on either Ukraine or Taiwan. \nSpecifically toward our farm exports and imports but also largely steel and aluminum. This is a deflection of course in order to take the spot light off of Russian aggression and to hamstring our ability to be in a strong economic position this also on the heels of the pandemic which was not an expected factor of course but obliterated the global supply chain causing extreme economic strife. You could argue that it was intentional but that is wacky and far right bullshit. Now that the tariffs are out of the way we can then look at. The next piece which is the war in Ukraine. Trump committed to false election claims that inspired right wing nut jobs to storm the capitol and if successful would have prevented our government from not only transitioning a new presidency but could have made our government ineffective to move on Russia invading Ukraine and potentially China invading Taiwan being that they could transition imports and exports to a newly revitalized war machine in Russia that successful stormed Ukraine taking 16 percent of the maize and 10 percent of the global wheat. Enough to cause a myriad of problems for the united states and force them into a more insular posture because of the domestic issues at home coupled with such a large loss of exported crops from Ukraine. \nThere is a ton more to this i imagine. but then we get to the balloon fiasco. Trump allowed Three such balloons to go across the united states without a word. Why is that? ignorance? intention? likely the latter. Being unsure as to what these balloons were collecting or depositing we can imagine they could have been doing anything of significance. Now if we want to do some crazy shit we could say the avian bird flu seems to have come about with some serious audacity. Is it the balloons? maybe which is why they opted to shoot it down in the water and not over land. This is just one possibility with the balloons. Another is that they were monitoring something else. Which is the more likely scenario. I think someone needs to google maps the locations in which is was floating and we can really determine what this particular balloon was doing. Or maybe it is just a communications or weather balloon. Anything is possible in my mind. Everything I have written is likely not the case but it does seem like that is a lot more to this puzzle then we are seeing. We are getting lost in the trees and not seeing the forest sadly because it is a constant barrage of bullshit. \nAnyway, I think that Russia, China, Trump and others who follow him are seeking to undermine our government and sow chaos for both Russia and China. There are just too many connections that make sense and I have touched on Two maybe connections. I just wonder what the government is not telling us and how far a long they really are in dealing with these things.",
">\n\nNow that Republicans know that Trump allowed three Chinese CCP balloons pass across the US during his tenure, they will now start railing on Biden for daring China and possible war by blowing up the CCP balloon.",
">\n\nIn fairness, three times during the Trump administration, China sent a balloon over the US, to no response. It might seem reasonable that we've decided to ignore stuff that's inconvenient to deal with.",
">\n\nI completely understand china’s stance here. They should be able to surveil other countries with out repercussion because the obvious unspoken law of “China can do whatever it wants” wasn’t taken into account. Obviously if another country attempted to do the same i’m they couldn’t because of the other unspoken law of. “You’re not china”",
">\n\nFor shooting a balloon? Man this story is getting weirder and weirder. I'd have thought they just let this one go - what the duck is happening here. \nNext thing I know we're going to find out there was an alien involved and there's a secret organization called Xcom",
">\n\nAnd China flying a spy balloon over the U.S. isn’t “violation of international practice”. Fuck off",
">\n\ni swear the only group with thinner skin that US conservatives are the CCP.",
">\n\nChina, do us all a favor and fuck off. Your country is a god damn disaster right now. \n*How much of a disaster are they?\nChina’s so fucked up that they make the us congress look like a highly functional institution.",
">\n\nXi, go eat some honey and calm down, and for the love of God, put some pants on.",
">\n\nLet’s send a spy ballon into their territory and see what their response is. \nWe can call it a weather balloon as well.",
">\n\nOr a gender reveal party trick gone wrong",
">\n\nGive me a break. You violated the United States sovereignty and borders.",
">\n\nTheir response feels trumpian. How dare you shoot down our illegal spy balloons conducting illegal surveillance. That has to be illegal and we will hold you accountable for it...",
">\n\nSo they'd be fine with us sending surveillance balloons over China? \nFFS China, you can't be serious here.",
">\n\nFine China, next time one of our weather balloons enters your airspace, you get to shoot it down.",
">\n\nGo home china you’re drunk",
">\n\nChina thinks they have a right to our airspace? It’s a clear provocation.",
">\n\nRepercussions for shooting down what they claimed was a “weather balloon” that went off course? They must take their weather seriously in China.",
">\n\nChina should not intervene in other countries' internal affairs, as they themselves would say.,",
">\n\nBig whoop wanna fight about it China ?",
">\n\nOh cool so Xi woulda been cool with us sending a balloon over Beijing right?",
">\n\nIt’s funny that China says it was a private companies balloon. When there are no “private “ companies in China. They are all beholden to the CCP",
">\n\nWhina gonna whine",
">\n\nchina needs a firm dose of reality",
">\n\nThe US probably waited till the American people saw it. To make news and become public aware. The fact that china is saying shooting it down was wrong of the US, makes me want to slap them.. being in our air space uninvited is way worse.",
">\n\nYawn……..",
">\n\nbut we’ve been told by maga that Biden only did this because China signed off. So which is it",
">\n\nI'm curios if the Chinese were asked to land the balloon before it was shot down. They had plenty of time, if a plane entered a County's airspace without permission it would be ordered to land before it was shot down.",
">\n\nThey are gonna send an even bigger balloon this time!",
">\n\nHow’s your boy Russia doing?",
">\n\nChina started it, we finished it. If they wanted it back, they should have come get it (with permission, naturally).\nI am very curious now to see what the contents reveal.",
">\n\nThere is zero chance this statement was meant to be taken seriously",
">\n\nI’m sorry we violated your aerial surveillance balls",
">\n\nChina is not a military threat so their threats in that sense are empty.\nThey are, however, an economic threat and could wreak some havoc there if they so chose.",
">\n\nI never thought World War III would start from popping Chinas balloon. But it is a sensitive Pooh on the other side lol. Ironically like Pooh bear. 🤔",
">\n\nIntruding to anoyher country air space is against international law. Therefore, Chinese ballon commit the security breach first and now threaten and bully other countries!",
">\n\nAre they trying to set a precedent for knocking down spy satellites.",
">\n\nFcking whiners.",
">\n\nWhat does China do to our weather balloons?",
">\n\nChina's final warning strikes again",
">\n\nThey are faking outrage. \nThe balloon's spy mission was already complete.",
">\n\nDidn’t they previously say it wasn’t theirs? 😂",
">\n\nHows that South China Sea extension going for ya ? Not a serious violation of international practice ?"
] |
>
|
[
"For the second time in my life, the USA has been mesmerized by a news story about a balloon.",
">\n\nWhich isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice, right?",
">\n\nTo be fair, the balloon boy one was weirder. A “spy balloon” feels a little more appropriate to be concerned about. But it’s 2023, who uses a balloon?",
">\n\nThat's the part that doesn't add up about all this. The Chinese have satellites. This stupid balloon couldn't have been accomplishing much, so what even was the point? ICBM sites aren't really secret.\nPeople will bring up \"testing our defenses\" or some shit, but for what? If they'd thought it was a real threat, it would've been shot down before it ever left Alaska. None of it makes any sense.",
">\n\nWell… they get to see how long it took us to notice them. Also, just because we aren’t sure what this thing can do doesn’t mean we take their word for it that it’s nothing. Their batshit response doesn’t suggest it’s nothing. I hope we recover useful bits from the downed balloon.\nEdit: I am not making conclusions about how long or not long it took us to notice. Only saying that might be a motivation for this weird Chinese balloon shenanigans.",
">\n\nJust because we didn't go public with it at first doesn't mean it wasn't tracked from the start. We literally have radars in Hawaii and the Aleutian islands that can spot targets the size of seagulls from thousands of miles away, and distinguish between that target and background noise or even active countermeasures. We absolutely noticed it days before it crossed into CONUS airspace, and the only reason the government said anything was because it was going to get noticed by the public. Source: I used to help design security measures for radar systems like the SBX in Hawaii and the TPY-2 theater air defense radars.",
">\n\nBingo. If it was not going to get seen by the public we (the public) probably wouldn't know about it. They wouldn't tell us about it unless there was some useful political reason to do so. The idea that the military only knows things when we do is ludicrous and naïve.",
">\n\nI don't think this was political at all. This was an intelligence decision. We spotted that balloon with early warning radars when it was over the Pacific, and likely started pointing ELINT and SIGINT assets at it. \nThe benefit of potentially intercepting Chinese BLOS/SATCOM waveforms, seeing what kind of encryption/spread spectrum algorithms they may be using, and using reach-back-and-attack methods to pinpoint potential satellites, ground stations or ships the balloon may be communicating with far outweighed the risks of letting it float over CONUS. \nThe chances of it being spotted by civilians with binoculars or semi-decent telescopes and creating a panic when it couldn't be explained was the risk. So, the government finally let folks know when it was over Montana. It had already crossed the Pacific, over the Aleutians (where the Pave Paws radar station is), and then down the western coast before the government went public. \nAnnouncing it in Montana was just to keep the public from freaking out. They'd already had days to use radar, satellite and aircraft imagery, and ELINT intercepts to figure out what it was and what it's potential capabilities were. \nWhy do you think the DoD said over and over that it wasn't a threat and the risk of shooting it down over CONUS was too great? The reason is not politics. They were collecting as much intel as possible before shooting it down safely to try and recover any debris that could be used to help reverse engineer Chinese comms from the Intel they've already gathered. That data is invaluable to cyber security and jam/counter-jam reverse engineering applications for the next decade.",
">\n\nWise words.\nPeople dont get how important it is to observe and track activity before intervening. You get way more back than the owner of the device for a few more kms of intrusion.",
">\n\nNot to mention, by sending the message that you think it is no threat and letting it continue on its way, you open up the possibility that it continues recording its targeted information since the possibility of recovery may exist (by the sender). Then when it reaches the ocean and you retrieve it, you can get a better idea from its data on what exactly its intentions were.\nMy question is why was China so obvious about it? I mean, they didn’t even color the thing blue, white in the sky serves as a mirror for the sun, making the thing stick out like a sore thumb. Why would they send something so flambuoyant? I can only speculate that they wanted the attention for some reason. Either to use this event as a pretext for some ‘response’ by them or to make a point to someone in our leadership.",
">\n\nHey, we'll just send one of ours over and they can shoot it down.",
">\n\nNot the Goodyear Blimp!",
">\n\nNah. It should just be a giant Winnie the Pooh. No attachments other than a card that says \"Oh, Bother.\"",
">\n\nTut tut it looks like rain",
">\n\nPretty sure sending aerial surveillance equipment into another country's sovereign airspace is also a \"serious violation of international practice\".",
">\n\nI agree.",
">\n\nMe, too.",
">\n\nQuick question:\nWhy wasn't that enormous balloon picked up on radar and shot down long before it reached the US?",
">\n\nSometimes knowing what other countries want to know is interesting so you let it happen.",
">\n\nThis. Who says we weren't intercepting their feed all along. It's safe to assume there're plots a brew we aren't meant to know.",
">\n\nthere were 3 during Trump's presidency, this isn't the first",
">\n\nI know and he’s running his mouth he would of shot it down.",
">\n\ntrump would be saying how much he loves and trusts president xi",
">\n\nNah, Xi ain't what Trump's been Putin in his mouth... 😏",
">\n\nWhy is this being seen as an indictment on a ‘weak’ president and not a logical military response? \nArmy General “Hey there’s this Chinese spy balloon floating over our territory. We calculate its capabilities to be negligible and the intelligence risk insignificant. What do you want to do?”\n“Don’t shoot it down to early to avoid making this a bigger incident. Monitor what it’s doing. Learn what we can and then shoot it down after absolute precedent is established and it can be done safely” \nSeems like a pretty strong, rational and logical response.",
">\n\nBecause republicans will twist any situation to try to make democrats look bad, no matter how they respond.",
">\n\nAbsolutely. If they had shot it down immediately they would have called Biden a war monger who is trying to start WW3.",
">\n\n1,000%",
">\n\n\"It's a rogue weather instrument. We can't control it\" \nStraight to \"how dare you remove the big ass balloon that we definitely had no control over\"",
">\n\nHow can you even violate 'international practice'? Practice means that it's not a law or agreement, so by definition it can't be violated. \nNot even to mention allowing foreign spy balloons through your restricted airspace untouched definitely isn't international practice lol.",
">\n\nAlso entering airspace without clearance alone is a violation of practice and law.",
">\n\nOr the fact that even if it was a weather balloon they didn’t tell anyone about it",
">\n\nKind of like forcibly downing a US Navy EP-3, holding its crew hostage, stealing its military tech, and dismantling it.",
">\n\nBut it was an accident!\n/s",
">\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision and the pilot of the Chinese jet died. It was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.",
">\n\n\nThe EP-3 was brought down by a midair collision \n\nWhich is kinda what you would do if you want to get your hands on a plane you would never in a million years be able to get access to\n\nand the pilot of the Chinese jet died\n\nThey claim, and would coincidently give a great reason why those people should be held temporarily WITH the plane.\n\nIt was an accident, although the collision happened due to the jets intentionally flying close to harass the EP-3.\n\nIt could be an accident, but its equally likely it wasn't.",
">\n\nYou know that's pretty funny. I find the US response of just ignoring the balloon the first few days, not throwing a diplomatic fit and taking it down with missiles but instead saying \"it's a spy balloon, there's no cause for concern because it cannot gather any intel that Chinese satellites already cannot\", then waiting for it to go over water before shooting it down to avoid any kind of casualties as a pretty chill response. Yet here is China throwing a tantrum calling the response \"s3Ri0uS vI0lAt10n\" \nBig flex for the US to hit the thing with a million dollar missile tho",
">\n\nChill and also basically the correct response. If we could have grounded it without a missile that would have been better but all in all, we didn't over-react at all and in so doing, reduced the amount of intelligence china could gather about our response capabilities.",
">\n\nAlso run our own intelligence on the technology and capabilities of the balloon.",
">\n\nBalloon was floaty, umm, filled with unknown gas, probably helium.",
">\n\nIt will keep our best scientists and engineers busy for decades to come.",
">\n\nMy mom just dropped this line:\n\"This only happened because we have a weak president.\" \nWhen I asked her to elaborate, her sentiment was that Trump was strong, and our international diplomacy was better under him. When I contradicted her, she played the \"entitled to my own opinion\" card.\nI can't keep up with this blind ignorance anymore, ya'll. How does somebody rationalize that worldview? Can I even help her?",
">\n\nMy dad said the exact same thing today. Verbatim. I assume Tucker said it. My dad repeats everything Tucker says. If he says something I think seems strange, I’ll google Tucker’s last segment and I hear exactly what my dad is upset about with keywords repeated and all. Words my dad previously never used.",
">\n\nI spent an hour with my dad today at a sporting event. Hadn’t seen him in two months. In the 60 minutes of time he managed to bring up “being woke” twice and that our president is weak for not shooting down the balloon immediately. And if it isn’t already evident, yes he watches Fox News all day every day.",
">\n\nMaybe try “I notice when you watch Tucker you become agitated and angry? Have you noticed how your behavior changes after you watch him?” I might also say “When I hear you say mean things, I check to see what Tucker Carlson said. Most of the time I find that you are repeating what Tucker told you to believe. Have you noticed that?” Sometimes these “free thinkers” when called out for being a Tucker automaton will be embarrassed about being manipulated.",
">\n\nHonestly, this exact strategy worked on my boomer mom. She has stopped watching Fox News. Important context though is that she is a Republican but hated trump from the beginning, and she’s not religious. I’d say she truly is a moderate Republican.",
">\n\nThose are the folks we desperately need to peel away from right wing media. She’s not actively seeking to hurt people, but that training will make her stand aside while christians destroy our society.",
">\n\nI mean, correct me if I'm wrong....but flying a device, doesn't matter if it's civilian or government, over a sovereign nation's air space is a pretty big \"No-No\".",
">\n\nSend a balloon over china full of tienamen square paperwork, everything china firewall banned..",
">\n\nImagine in 20 years from now, if some kid asks you when the world went crazy and you reply, “It all started with that damn balloon.”",
">\n\nthe world went crazy after 9/11.\nIt was really different before then",
">\n\nIt was culturally as if a dark cloud descended upon us. No matter how hard the sun shines now, it's always there.",
">\n\nIt really was a different vibe. Maybe it was just because I was younger. The time before felt like living in an upbeat TV show where everything was looking up and the future looked great. Everyone was optimistic and ready for \"the future\". Since then I've slowly become 100% convinced that nothing good will ever happen again.",
">\n\nI was quite young for 9/11 so I don’t really remember a world before. But media and news became very dark in the early 2000s after 9/11, that was obvious even to 6 year old me. The fearmongering on news channels made it hard for me to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones about terrorists here, there, everywhere. War. Movies changed too.\nSo I don’t think it’s just romanticised youth.",
">\n\nA civilian spy balloon?",
">\n\nIf you zoom in on the clear pictures the device underneath the balloon is clearly wearing an I heart New York shirt so it's probably just a tourist balloon. Guided tours around the U.S' Nuclear Command and ICBM silos has been really popular lately.",
">\n\nHold fire hold fire! He’s got a fucking pin from the 9/11 memorial!!! Hold fire!!!",
">\n\nif they wanted to know the weather over Montana, they could have just asked.\njzeesh.",
">\n\nProbably super obsessed with Yellowstone, the series.",
">\n\nI thought it was because we use montana for nukes and icbms",
">\n\nThey can shove their wolf warrior diplomacy up their ass - The actions taken by the USAF are established as legal and correct.",
">\n\nOh FFS, they said it was a weather balloon, why should they care? 🙄 If it was a private company's property the loss should teach them a good lesson about properly managing their things anyway.",
">\n\nI'm really getting a kick out of all the \"some company's property\" whining from China. \nI mean, c'mon. If it really was a legitimate accident they would have thrown the company under the bus from the beginning. The fact they haven't even told us their name is code for \"it doesn't exist.\"",
">\n\nHow many private companies in China that are flying sophisticated high altitude balloons, that the Chinese Gov't doesnt have a controlling interest in?",
">\n\nNone. China has no actual private companies.",
">\n\nChina would have shot it down if it was a us balloon in their airspace",
">\n\nThey wouldn't have even waited for it not to be over land and endanger their people.",
">\n\nLmao what in the gaslighting master class is this. We send spy equipment over your airspace then get mad when you shoot it down.",
">\n\nChina is just doing what North Korea does. They know we were completely justified in doing this.",
">\n\nInternational practice these nuts, Jack",
">\n\nI just read this in Biden's voice",
">\n\nNobody fucks with joe Biden",
">\n\nThis is a Country who crashes their planes into our planes when we go into the South China Sea",
">\n\nBut they didn't shoot at us, so it wasn't technically an act of aggression, see? \n/s just in case.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our completely peaceful and not secret at all civilian weather balloon.",
">\n\nI'm sorry, what?\nWe shot down a surveillance device in our airspace.\nEat me.",
">\n\nI wish Biden or some official would come out and say, in an official capacity, \"We've heard China's complaints, they can shove their bullshit all the way back up their own ass.\"",
">\n\nSeriously, the hypocrisy. I mean think about it, isn’t sending an aerial surveillance balloon to another country also a serious violation of international law and practice?",
">\n\nThere they go threatening \"repercussions\" for their own fuck up.",
">\n\nIt’s much easier to spy on a democratic country than a authoritarian one. I think it’s just a great opportunity for the USA to get away with increased surveillance of china.",
">\n\nYou know what else is a serious violation of international practice? Flying a spy balloon in another sovereign nation’s airspace over missile silos.",
">\n\nThat's fucking hilarious. \"You shot down our spy balloon above your country in your airspace!\"",
">\n\nAre they fucking serious?",
">\n\n\"serious violation of international practice\" \nLol they realllly struggled to justify their outrage here. Meanwhile, they've got aggressive, nonsense territorial disputes with basically half the Pacific fucking ocean.",
">\n\nLMAO. The same china that tried to knock US aircraft out of international airspace by running into them with fighter jets?\nChina is just posturing. US airspace is US airspace.",
">\n\nTried? They did in 2001...",
">\n\nMAGA was losing their minds that Biden didn't shoot this down right away - then the Pentagon said there were 3 of them that flew across the US when Trump was POTUS and he did nothing about it!",
">\n\nOf course they are upset. According to the pentagon they've been allowed to send balloons unimpeded under Trump.",
">\n\nSo basically the whole point of the balloon was to create tension with the US.",
">\n\nPretty similar to the Russian attitude toward Ukraine. Invade another country and they start fighting back and Russia is all, “Where did all this hostility come from!?”",
">\n\nDark Brandon pulls up google translate to find out the Chinese for \"Go Fuck Yourself!\"",
">\n\nPut down the meth pipe China.",
">\n\nCCP having a hissy fit just means we're doing the right thing.",
">\n\nDear china…..go fuck yourself\nRespectfully \nUncle Sam",
">\n\nThanks uncle",
">\n\nI’m quite sure China would not let a surveillance balloon float all over their country either",
">\n\nbut it's just a weather balloon that was blown off course...",
">\n\nRepercussions!? What'll they do? Stop sending knock-off/fake products?",
">\n\nI hate to burst their bubble 😂",
">\n\nShots fired",
">\n\nUSA: \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\nChina: sniff \"nothing\"",
">\n\nWhatever, China. As if you wouldn't have done the same.",
">\n\nSays the country that will attack you in previously international waters that they \"annexed\" by building islands.",
">\n\nUS needs to do the same thing. Build a couple of small islands right next to Taiwan. Call it US Pacific Islands. St. Jon. St. Jane, and St Doe. Lol.",
">\n\nGotta love China blustering and whinging about literally anything that might conceivably hurt their feelings.\nHaving a god-damn spy balloon over the U.S. violates international sovereignty.",
">\n\n\"How dare you shoot me after I came into your house uninvited\"",
">\n\nYou’d think that if China was really concerned and “regretful” about accidentally letting a weather balloon drift over US and Canadian Airspace, they’d let someone know in order to prevent an international incident?",
">\n\nPiss off, China",
">\n\nChina: “it’s a weather ballon that blew off course. It’s worthless ”\nUS: “ok well we think it’s a surveillance device and it’s in our air space. We’re going to destroy it after it enters open water to avoid any unnecessary casualties”\nChina: “how dare you”",
">\n\nChina: how is it our fault that the jet stream just happens to flow over your missile silos and sometimes stalls out right over one??",
">\n\nSpoiler alert China. You're not special.",
">\n\nKeep your “civilian” aircraft out of our sovereign airspace and maybe there wouldn’t be such a harsh response. \nAs a South Carolinian was proud to see it get shot down off our coast. Who knew a balloon would create such unity between people.",
">\n\nYeah, maybe if we go to war America will forget about their silly culture war",
">\n\nAmerican’s need to be at war with something to occupy their time. \nForeign nations, culture, masks. You name it.",
">\n\nImagine what we could do if we could harness that energy...direct it",
">\n\nLooks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaain!!!!",
">\n\nI bet if the US sent a big slow balloon with a bunch of cameras and recording equipment over China… it would get shot down… in fact… any nation would shoot it down… I would think.",
">\n\nThis whole thing is sooo stupid. Everyone needs to calm tf down",
">\n\nCan they shoot down tik tok next? this story makes no sense...why would China spy with such an obvious craft?",
">\n\nThis country has been divided long enough best way to unite any group of people is a common enemy and China seems more than willing to play the part so bring it China Let’s play!",
">\n\nWouldn’t it be stupid if this is what sparked WWIII",
">\n\nHot take: it contained literally nothing, but they anticipated its mere presence would demand a full-scale military response to satisfy political pressures. They spend $400 on a balloon, we spend $400k on a mission to intercept it. That's what you call asymmetrical warfare.",
">\n\nChina: HEY, that other orange guy let us do it!",
">\n\nOk ok, fair is fair...send them a balloon to shoot.",
">\n\nThe Chinese government can shove it.",
">\n\nOh fuck you, china. Close some concentration camps and maybe we'll talk.",
">\n\nI’m British. What’s a polite way to say “ piss off”?",
">\n\nCan’t we just tell china that a bullet used for meteorological monitoring strayed off course and was blown into their balloon inadvertently?",
">\n\nDue to a violation of American airspace",
">\n\nWell the US should just send a balloon their way and see what happens",
">\n\nNo china, you do not get to fly equipment into us airspace. China didn’t even offer a solution to removing it .",
">\n\nI wonder if I'd be allowed to fly a balloon over china.",
">\n\nIt shouldn't have fucking been flying over the US, then. Like, what the actual fuck?",
">\n\nAn unknown and uncooperative air vehicle in a country's airspace, shot down by said country. I'm not so sure it's a violation of anything.",
">\n\nSo this is like the robber who sues the owner of the place they stole from they were injured during the crime?",
">\n\nThe fact they could say this with a straight face is fuckin astounding.",
">\n\nThis whole stunt was designed to get a response from the US so the Chinese can whine and cry.",
">\n\nDear China,\nFUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT. \nSincerely,\nJoe",
">\n\nIf it was just a weather balloon, why would China be so upset?",
">\n\nBecause China won't have any weather without their balloon",
">\n\nHilarious violation of territorial rights warrants ability to shoot down the balloon.",
">\n\nThe thing about also being a sovereign country if we don't want it in our airspace we have the right to shoot it down. If we flew a spy plane over China and they shot it down the fault is on us not them. This is a temper tantrums of why don't you be let us spy on you.",
">\n\nchina go fuck yourself",
">\n\nChina: Launches strange balloon, admits it got away from them. Urges calm when the story hits US media, claims it's a weather satellite only.\nUS: Waits days, then shoots it down (according to China, a weather balloon) after it passes over the ocean out of an abundance of caution and being fully within its rights to do so. \nChina: I can't believe you've done this.\nDid I get that right?",
">\n\n\nadmits it got away after getting expose in media\n\nThey only admit in bad faith after they got expose by being sneaky. In fact, if no one notice it, they will just go on and maybe goes to other country. Intruding other nation space without permission.",
">\n\nReally? I think anything in our airspace is fair game.",
">\n\nWhy are they so concerned about an errant \"weather balloon\" being destroyed? Hmmm",
">\n\nChina… and this is just my personal opinion… can go to the nearest corner store… find the dumpster behind the building… find a nice comfy spot… take in the scenery… and then… and only then… they go FUCK themselves…",
">\n\nthought they said it's just some civilian balloon, what do they care?",
">\n\nWell it's not nice to pop other peoples' balloons.",
">\n\nlike China said, it's a civilian balloon. It has nothing to do with the government, it's none of their business.",
">\n\nWe should just reply with The Beastie Boys - Pop Your Balloon",
">\n\nOh that’s rich",
">\n\nOk the next time we slowly float a dirigible from 1905 across your country airspace you can shoot it down. Sound fair? Fine.",
">\n\nChinese Spy Balloon is my new band name.",
">\n\nRelax people; NORAD easily tracks Santa Claus each Christmas, and he's moving close to the speed of light. The Chinese balloon was a piece of cake.",
">\n\nUS: Why were you sending dick pics to another woman?\nChina: Why were you looking at my phone!?",
">\n\nHave some ice cream, Xi.",
">\n\nHow dare you shoot down our spy balloon!! You'll be hearing from our lawyers",
">\n\nWhat's wrong with you President Xi? No shame fo ru?",
">\n\nAfter the last couple years why are we even humoring china, force apple and other US based companies out of there into democratic countries, this is ridiculous",
">\n\nOh China, go fuck yourself.",
">\n\nSo exciting, going to war over a hot air balloon",
">\n\nI think China wanted the US to down it right away so they could paint America as hysterical and trigger happy and violent. When that didn’t happen, it looks like they didn’t have a plan B, so just nonsensically went with the original narrative leaving everyone to scratch their heads. It’s like when they got themselves kicked out of the Nobel ceremony and had their own, or when trumps team mistakenly held a press conference in a lawn store.",
">\n\nWe hurt winnie the poohs feelings :(",
">\n\nI see a lot of posts about trump letting three balloons float around. I do not want to seem like a conspiracy theorist but here it goes. Trump if he is a Russia shill for Putin is also a shill for china it doesn't take that much brain power to make that connection being that both Russia and china work together often times. The tariffs against china during the trump administration were an intentional economic slight against the American public to weaken our economic ability to address an attack on either Ukraine or Taiwan. \nSpecifically toward our farm exports and imports but also largely steel and aluminum. This is a deflection of course in order to take the spot light off of Russian aggression and to hamstring our ability to be in a strong economic position this also on the heels of the pandemic which was not an expected factor of course but obliterated the global supply chain causing extreme economic strife. You could argue that it was intentional but that is wacky and far right bullshit. Now that the tariffs are out of the way we can then look at. The next piece which is the war in Ukraine. Trump committed to false election claims that inspired right wing nut jobs to storm the capitol and if successful would have prevented our government from not only transitioning a new presidency but could have made our government ineffective to move on Russia invading Ukraine and potentially China invading Taiwan being that they could transition imports and exports to a newly revitalized war machine in Russia that successful stormed Ukraine taking 16 percent of the maize and 10 percent of the global wheat. Enough to cause a myriad of problems for the united states and force them into a more insular posture because of the domestic issues at home coupled with such a large loss of exported crops from Ukraine. \nThere is a ton more to this i imagine. but then we get to the balloon fiasco. Trump allowed Three such balloons to go across the united states without a word. Why is that? ignorance? intention? likely the latter. Being unsure as to what these balloons were collecting or depositing we can imagine they could have been doing anything of significance. Now if we want to do some crazy shit we could say the avian bird flu seems to have come about with some serious audacity. Is it the balloons? maybe which is why they opted to shoot it down in the water and not over land. This is just one possibility with the balloons. Another is that they were monitoring something else. Which is the more likely scenario. I think someone needs to google maps the locations in which is was floating and we can really determine what this particular balloon was doing. Or maybe it is just a communications or weather balloon. Anything is possible in my mind. Everything I have written is likely not the case but it does seem like that is a lot more to this puzzle then we are seeing. We are getting lost in the trees and not seeing the forest sadly because it is a constant barrage of bullshit. \nAnyway, I think that Russia, China, Trump and others who follow him are seeking to undermine our government and sow chaos for both Russia and China. There are just too many connections that make sense and I have touched on Two maybe connections. I just wonder what the government is not telling us and how far a long they really are in dealing with these things.",
">\n\nNow that Republicans know that Trump allowed three Chinese CCP balloons pass across the US during his tenure, they will now start railing on Biden for daring China and possible war by blowing up the CCP balloon.",
">\n\nIn fairness, three times during the Trump administration, China sent a balloon over the US, to no response. It might seem reasonable that we've decided to ignore stuff that's inconvenient to deal with.",
">\n\nI completely understand china’s stance here. They should be able to surveil other countries with out repercussion because the obvious unspoken law of “China can do whatever it wants” wasn’t taken into account. Obviously if another country attempted to do the same i’m they couldn’t because of the other unspoken law of. “You’re not china”",
">\n\nFor shooting a balloon? Man this story is getting weirder and weirder. I'd have thought they just let this one go - what the duck is happening here. \nNext thing I know we're going to find out there was an alien involved and there's a secret organization called Xcom",
">\n\nAnd China flying a spy balloon over the U.S. isn’t “violation of international practice”. Fuck off",
">\n\ni swear the only group with thinner skin that US conservatives are the CCP.",
">\n\nChina, do us all a favor and fuck off. Your country is a god damn disaster right now. \n*How much of a disaster are they?\nChina’s so fucked up that they make the us congress look like a highly functional institution.",
">\n\nXi, go eat some honey and calm down, and for the love of God, put some pants on.",
">\n\nLet’s send a spy ballon into their territory and see what their response is. \nWe can call it a weather balloon as well.",
">\n\nOr a gender reveal party trick gone wrong",
">\n\nGive me a break. You violated the United States sovereignty and borders.",
">\n\nTheir response feels trumpian. How dare you shoot down our illegal spy balloons conducting illegal surveillance. That has to be illegal and we will hold you accountable for it...",
">\n\nSo they'd be fine with us sending surveillance balloons over China? \nFFS China, you can't be serious here.",
">\n\nFine China, next time one of our weather balloons enters your airspace, you get to shoot it down.",
">\n\nGo home china you’re drunk",
">\n\nChina thinks they have a right to our airspace? It’s a clear provocation.",
">\n\nRepercussions for shooting down what they claimed was a “weather balloon” that went off course? They must take their weather seriously in China.",
">\n\nChina should not intervene in other countries' internal affairs, as they themselves would say.,",
">\n\nBig whoop wanna fight about it China ?",
">\n\nOh cool so Xi woulda been cool with us sending a balloon over Beijing right?",
">\n\nIt’s funny that China says it was a private companies balloon. When there are no “private “ companies in China. They are all beholden to the CCP",
">\n\nWhina gonna whine",
">\n\nchina needs a firm dose of reality",
">\n\nThe US probably waited till the American people saw it. To make news and become public aware. The fact that china is saying shooting it down was wrong of the US, makes me want to slap them.. being in our air space uninvited is way worse.",
">\n\nYawn……..",
">\n\nbut we’ve been told by maga that Biden only did this because China signed off. So which is it",
">\n\nI'm curios if the Chinese were asked to land the balloon before it was shot down. They had plenty of time, if a plane entered a County's airspace without permission it would be ordered to land before it was shot down.",
">\n\nThey are gonna send an even bigger balloon this time!",
">\n\nHow’s your boy Russia doing?",
">\n\nChina started it, we finished it. If they wanted it back, they should have come get it (with permission, naturally).\nI am very curious now to see what the contents reveal.",
">\n\nThere is zero chance this statement was meant to be taken seriously",
">\n\nI’m sorry we violated your aerial surveillance balls",
">\n\nChina is not a military threat so their threats in that sense are empty.\nThey are, however, an economic threat and could wreak some havoc there if they so chose.",
">\n\nI never thought World War III would start from popping Chinas balloon. But it is a sensitive Pooh on the other side lol. Ironically like Pooh bear. 🤔",
">\n\nIntruding to anoyher country air space is against international law. Therefore, Chinese ballon commit the security breach first and now threaten and bully other countries!",
">\n\nAre they trying to set a precedent for knocking down spy satellites.",
">\n\nFcking whiners.",
">\n\nWhat does China do to our weather balloons?",
">\n\nChina's final warning strikes again",
">\n\nThey are faking outrage. \nThe balloon's spy mission was already complete.",
">\n\nDidn’t they previously say it wasn’t theirs? 😂",
">\n\nHows that South China Sea extension going for ya ? Not a serious violation of international practice ?",
">\n\nLike all very powerful states, the leadership believes laws and customs are for other people."
] |
I keep a mio in the door of the fridge for this reason. Just a hint of flavor makes a big difference.
|
[] |
>
I drink flavored seltzer at night (Ruby Red is my go to) the bubbles and bit of flavor really hit the spot.
|
[
"I keep a mio in the door of the fridge for this reason. Just a hint of flavor makes a big difference."
] |
>
Brush your teeth before bed.
Also don't mouth breathe while you sleep.
|
[
"I keep a mio in the door of the fridge for this reason. Just a hint of flavor makes a big difference.",
">\n\nI drink flavored seltzer at night (Ruby Red is my go to) the bubbles and bit of flavor really hit the spot."
] |
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