3 ms·

I disagree. The spy balloon was likely inspected shortly before it entered US territory and the military deemed it as something that was not critical and simply

I disagree. The spy balloon was likely inspected shortly before it entered US territory and the military deemed it as something that was not critical and simply moved anything sensitive out of the way of the a balloon. Meanwhile they likely monitored the emissions of the balloon to do intelligence collecting of Chinese capabilities. The DoD said they were aware of the balloon shortly after it left China and were monitoring it even before it flew over Alaska. The US probably gained more from this than China gained. Meanwhile the general public and US media got very invigorated about it so helped stock public opinion against China in general which helps prevent more stealing of secrets to China but increasing the cautiousness of the general populace.

psychphysic 4y ago
Well China gained a very important piece of information and international agreement. One, that region is considered the countries airspace. Two, we can distroy and keep spy gear. Both are useful rules to bring up in the future. The U-2 and SR-71 both stopped flying due to the risk of being downed and not moral consequences. Similarly the US (probably) stopped spying on allies due to the risk of another whistleblower and not moral reasons. At the same time, similar events have happened to establish that space spy satillites are okay. Finally, this is easy to forget esp. if you're a US citizen. Most of the world considers this incident a bit of a joke. Official responses are along standard narrative lines. But no one really cares, the US reacted like this because it didn't know why China would want to use this balloon to spy and so wants to nip this activity in the bud.