The China balloon.
 

I'm calling fake news and fear mongering x saber rattling on ourside.

What is China's official take?

I think they are just getting ppl conditioned for things being shot down over population centers.

It was a pretty petty move. We should have offered to help recover it. Calling it a spy balloon is super silly.

things like this are response tests

gotta look at things from the CCP perspective. while Americans plan for the next fiscal quarter, the CCP plans for the next quarter century.

they know that they are going to want to make some military moves in the near future, so they will constantly fly things into other nation's air defense identification zones, they've been doin that for awhile with taiwan, japan, philipines etc.

a fighter jet in US airspace would be too much of a provocation, so they'll fly something like a balloon into our airspace, its easily deniable as some sort of civilian craft and they will glean information such as response times, from where, what craft responds, american civilian reactions, american DoD reactions etc

then they will apply this info to their military calculus for future goals they wish to accomplish

2 years ago it was extremely racist to wonder if covid came from a lab in china but now we're shooting down what looks to me like a weather balloon and every news station is talking about Chinese spies.

Seems a little strange to me.

Even if it is a spy balloon, they were desperate to help china cover up a pandemic, why the change in reporting and political positioning?

Also, why is the news (all news) and every politician all in agreement? From buttige to biden to fox news... they all are like, "this is a spy balloon." like, wtf why so sure?

Why is that not racist to assume it's not a weather balloon all of the sudden?

Just seems so, strange to me...

biden admin merely used this particular balloon as a vehicle to appear tough against china

F-22 air-air kills to date: 1 balloon

there have been other balloons that floated by, probably going back to the G.w. bush era.

it's only a balloon, and shooting it down is inherently risky, and a balloon isn't going to see anything that chinese satellites can't see. So again its a response testing platform, which isn't a real threat, and could be risky to destroy as you don't know what its made of, what its carrying or whats inside it.

so most days the DoD is just gonna be like, "screw that it'll drop in the ocean in a few days, lets go get lunch"

but dark brandon being a vast failure that his admin is, just saw a feeble opportunity to exercise a little military power, so they sent an F-22 to down a balloon with an air-air missle.

its a stunt, they coulda hit it with alot of things which are alot cheaper.

Being tough on china was considered racist 2 years ago...

Wondering if covid came from a weapons research lab got you thrown into a gulag.

the political calculations indicated that this was an opportunity to appear to stand up to the CCP, without any real-world consequences.

the racism element of suggesting covid came from a chinese lab was just one prong of a multi-faceted defense from the CCP and died out fast

western media doesn't believe that asians deserve racial protections, but they also want their tv/movies to be allowed to sell in china, so they have to carry a little CCP water, hence china virus is racist.

thing is tho, "chinese" isn't a race, its a nationality.

How much does a weather balloon cost?

The common cost figure for a AIM9 Sidewinder missile is $604k.

China came up with a really good counter-antagonism for our freedom of the sea patrols. :(

Ok but Han are the main ethnicity in China.

oh rest assured that we won't run out of missiles, regardless of the price tag.

one could make a legal argument, as freedom of navigation exercises are protected under international law, but violating a sovereign nations ADIZ without identifying yourself is illegal

so like usual, the CCP is still in the wrong here.

What died out fast was any hope at actually finding the origin of the covid virus.

I disagree, I think the way our media and goverment is handling this balloon thing is extremely strange.

I dont think you can find an example where we've ever held china accountable for anything or didn't just follow their lead with their shenanigans.