I could tell this was a dumb story from the beginning. The US gov deciding to make it super-important by not sending a top official to China was a natural fire-

I could tell this was a dumb story from the beginning. The US gov deciding to make it super-important by not sending a top official to China was a natural fire-starter for regular people, not just news junkies. Ultimately, the only interesting conversation I got from it was why it might be hard to shoot down: A standard 50cal as used circa WW2 to shoot down balloons would be sufficient but too short ranged A fighter jet with an 20mm autocannon would easily deal with it but they also shoot 2000+ rounds a minute which would result in tons of dangerous rounds going right through then possibly hitting the ground near civillians. Modern autocannon bullets that will safely auto-destruct in the air but there wasn't an US airforce craft that had them available. etc, etc, etc. https://twitter.com/TrentTelenko/status/1621960968375877632 https://twitter.com/TrentTelenko/status/1621960968375877632 So even totally wasteful stories can generate interesting thought experiments. Even when the total sum of human attention is a million times out of whack of the IRL value of caring in the first place.