For all these folks pontificating about this ostensibly PRC surveillance balloon, I'd like you to answer a few questions for me, because I have not been made aware of the answers. I don't mean that these answers are not out there somewhere, but in what I've heard and read, as of the writing of this post on 05-Feb-2023, I don't have them.
These answers make a whole lot of difference as to what actions should be taken. There has been a lot of criticism of public officials (such as "Brandon", his Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, his Secretary of State Antony Blinken, his Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, and so on), mostly along the lines of, why haven't you shot this down (yet)?
- Within let's say 20 kilograms, how massive is it?
- Does it contain hazardous materials of any kind?
- Does it contain biohazards?
- Does it contain anything nuclear/radioactive?
- Does it contain any of these sorts of things in a container which is designed to mask its presence which would come apart if lower in the atmosphere (with a barometric trigger for example), or is impacted?
- OK, at this point, because an Air Force fighter has shot it down, and it is in the Atlantic somewhere off the coast of South Carolina, we know the likelihood of these is small
- Even though many commentators have stated the lack of population density over some of the States it has drifted, would you want the payload of this thing crushing your house in two? My point would be, a population density of 1 per 100 square kilometers is still nonzero. And to think anyone can control its descent somehow to me is tenuous at best. Just ask the Aussies who had the misfortune of being somewhere near the remains of Skylab.
Look, as the saying goes, even a blind squirrel finds a nut on rare occasion, and I think this is one of those times. Even though I can't stand much of what Brandon espouses (or I wouldn't call him "Brandon"), this was the right call, deferring to his cabinet. Actually, it came out recently that Brandon wanted to shoot this thing down on Wednesday, but instead his administration delayed until around today, when it would be much safer to do over the ocean. It's also supposed to be an oxymoron to say "military intelligence," but darn it, it's their jobs to be on top of things like this, and at least this time it seems like their jobs were done properly.
The better question to ask would be, how did we allow it to get over our nation to begin with? Was it launched from the PRC, or could it have been a PRC agent working within North America? Please just remember, we probably didn't detect it, and everything should be judged from what we do now, not what could have been done. We can't go back in time and look at what we would have done when it was presumably over the Pacific.
English is a difficult enough language to interpret correctly when its rules are followed, let alone when the speaker or writer chooses not to follow those rules.
"Jeopardy!" replies and randomcaps really suck!