On a sidenote, I don't know how this whole balloon thing got started. If China really did intentionally send one for "reasons," or if it was a simple weather, or even Alibaba purchased, balloon that strayed of course. But the shitshow that has happened since has been a sight to behold. Really, even if China didn't intend it, they've won perhaps their biggest PR victory over the West since the Australian Special Forces War Crime art on Twitter. To make a superpower have such a paranoid fit over balloons, that they deploy 5th generation fighter jets using munitions costing $500,000 and burning $80,000 worth of fuel per hour to shoot down objects (and even in once case missing the target) that were later admitted to be just aerial objects of no military significance? Well we know that they were of commercial value, so wouldn't be surprised if there are some big ass lawsuits coming. Plus, did whoever authorize the airforce to be on this level of combat readiness ever think about the fact that just maybe, they might accidentally shoot down something like people running a social media inventors channel testing out a homemade balloon?
I'll just end with this, I read a journalist writing for a major US publication today talking about how China is testing America's air defenses with cheap ass balloons and applying tested war doctrines about using underhanded means as a weaker power to take on a stronger power. Well tbf, they got it 50% right. Weaker powers use many methods to take on stronger powers and China perhaps was no different in the deployment of these balloons against America. Only the blow struck wasn't something as trivial as "revealing gaps in America's air defense" afterall, even the most jingoistic Chinese nationalist doesn't expect J-20s to be threatening America's airspace in the next 30 or even 50 years. It was a blow struck to the key feature of all great empires that usually leads them to the irrationality prescipitating their decline, and it was indeed to America's ego.