We've been tracking this balloon for much longer than its been over land, plus you can choose where and when to shoot it down, so the excuse of putting civilian

We've been tracking this balloon for much longer than its been over land, plus you can choose where and when to shoot it down, so the excuse of putting civilians at risk by doing so is hard to believe. It makes me wonder if it isn't boobytrapped or tamper-proofed, e.g. has a radioactive payload. Not sure what the options would be in that case. One option might be to hack it and take over the controls, the way that Iran did with one of our drones a few years back: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93U.S._RQ-170_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93U.S._RQ-170_incid...